The Avengers
Title: The Avengers
Author: ubiquirk
Fandom: BtVS
Rating: PG13
Genre: drama, action/adventure
Word Count: ~6700
Characters: Faith, Giles
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set post “Chosen,” just after “No Future for You.” Written for summer_of_giles 2009. Third in the Avengers Series. Although each story can stand alone, this one is the direct sequel to both ‘Feet of Clay’ and ‘New Kind of Same’ and references events in each. Much thanks to my beta firefly_124.
Summary: Each estranged in their lives, Faith and Giles have formed a ‘working partnership between equals.’ But something’s got the demons of London in an uproar, and the duo’s first big case as ‘Peel and Steed’ proves tougher than expected … on multiple levels.
1
Steps echo unevenly off the dank walls of a dark basement stairway, clip, clop, clip, clop, as a large shape moves with the dancing step of a little girl.
A hand reaches out of shadow, grabbing to pull the new arrival into a wedge of light, where it shrinks down to coalesce out of darkness into a beautiful young woman with angular features contrasted by full lips, all coffee-warm skin offset by shockingly white hair.
“Papa!” Her voice a layer of sharp notes cutting through lushness.
“Well, my Femme. How did you do?”
“Oh, they loved me, Papa! I am to come back every night.”
“I’m sure you are.” He steps forward, a plain white man marked by sunken cheeks and cold, cold eyes. He pats her hair as she smiles at him. “I’m sure you are.”
~~~
“Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap,” Faith yells as she takes off running down Gerrard Street. “Why didn’t you tell me these things were so freaking fast?”
“I …” Huffing to keep up, Giles watches the Xeeblant Demon rabbit around a group of pedestrians. “I didn’t think we’d actually find one at Wong Kei’s - I just thought everyone was complaining about the wait staff as usual.”
“So we were really just going out for Chinese?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll teach you not to be so cheap next time.” She flashes him a cheeky grin and bounds ahead, scattering a huddle of tourists stopped dead in the middle of the pavement.
Giles follows, quick as he can, mumbling apologies as he goes.
One of the men, an American by accent, loudly explains over the protesting squawks that it’s typical London - all rude actions covered by polite words.
Before Giles can remark on dozy pillocks taking up the entire thoroughfare, the demon dodges left across traffic, sending a scooter careening into the side of a black cab, which comes to a bouncing halt of hastily applied brakes.
With a series of leaps, Faith dances over the hood of the cab and tackles the Xeeblant into an alleyway.
A chaos of horns and yelling billows behind him, but all Giles can hear as he rounds the corner are the clacks and grunts of flesh hitting hard chitin.
Having shucked off its human guise, the bottle-green demon stands a good six feet tall, a whirl of multiple thin limbs that move spider quick. Three of these bat Faith across the alley to hit the wall with a smack of skull on brick.
Shaking off the shock, she steps forward and pivots, lashing a leg up in a high kick that snaps the insectile head to the side.
Righting itself, the demon chitters and grabs her with several tiny pincers to lift her above its head.
“Faith!” Giles yells and throws the iron dagger in her direction.
Her hand snaps it out of the air, and just as the Xeeblant gets her overhead, she lashes out and down, cleaving the braincase with a pulpy crunch of exoskeleton.
It collapses beneath her, and she tumbles off its slick side with enough force to take Giles out at the knees.
A wave of excited voices comes from the mouth of the alley - the middle of Chinatown isn’t exactly the most unpopulated place to go demon hunting in London.
Lying flat out on his back, Faith sprawled across his calves, the large Xeeblant carcass beside him not dissolving into a puddle of goo, Giles can’t help but laugh.
~~~
The door to his Islington terrace house slams closed behind her as Faith leans against it, laughing. “And … and I still can’t believe they bought it! Street theater!”
He grins. “Well, most of them were American.”
“Ha bloody ha,” she says in an English accent.
His mood chills. It’s the accent he taught her when he blackmailed her into killing a fellow Slayer. He turns to hide his face, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on a hook. Was this partnership nothing more than selfishness on his part now that he’d alienated Buffy? He looks at Faith standing before him, face open when she should be damning him for being …
For being exactly what the First wanted him to become.
The room fades as images of jumbled headstones swirl around him. ‘Monster’, the First’s Angelus voice whispers in his mind.
He realizes he’s been staring when Faith frowns a little and says, “Lighten up - it was just a joke.” She swats him on the arm and walks past.
He follows her into the kitchen. “Would you care for tea?”
“Nah, I’m gonna grab a beer.” Rooting in the refrigerator, she pulls out two bright-yellow cans of Boddington’s. “Want one?”
Setting down the electric kettle, he says, “God, yes.” He could really do with a whisky - or three - but beer is something of a routine for them, and he’s got used to drinking straight from the can like she does.
Faith’s face, which had been carefully neutral, wears a small smile as he accepts the beer.
It’s only been two months since Genevieve, since he and Faith declared themselves partners. This new ease between them feels … nice. And somewhat fragile.
Because he’s still not sure it’s safe - for her - to get close. She may have killed Genevieve by accident, but Giles killed Roden knowingly. ‘The only Watcher in the history of the Council to have been considered for the wet-works team.’ He shoves the First’s voice from his thoughts and drinks quickly, downing half the can in one go.
“So. What was up with old bug boy there? Why were you surprised to see him if you’d been tipped off he was around?”
“It’s not that I was that surprised he was there, per se.” He takes a long swallow of bitter.
She cocks an eyebrow and waves a hand for him to get on with it.
“Xeeblants are one of the most peaceful demon species, often living and working in the midst of humans, usually in some capacity having to do with food preparation.”
“Ugh. Freaking big-ass bugs in the kitchen. Remind me to never eat out again like ever.”
“I think this falls directly in the ‘don’t know, can’t hurt’ category. Xeeblants are everywhere, and their glamours are typically so well crafted that you’d never guess they weren’t human.”
“Well, that one in the Chinese place was already looking kinda green when we got there, and it seems he missed the memo on being peaceful.”
“Which is what’s strange. We never should have seen his glamour slip, and he never should have hit that patron over the head with a tray. It’s all completely out of character.”
“And it sounds like it’s not the only thing weird going on around here.”
“What?” His can hits the table, a quick sound of surprise.
Faith takes a long pull on her Boddington’s, grinning around the can, making him wait. With a satisfied sigh and a wipe of her mouth, she sets down the beer, smile still firmly in place. “While you were off fooling all those people, I talked to the London Slayers you called to do clean-up.”
“And?”
“Sunita says they’re being called out an awful lot lately. More demons in more places - it’s like good cell phone service, only evil.”
“Did she have any idea what was stirring them up?”
“Nope.” She tapped her can against his and raised it in a toast. “Which means we get to find out.”
~~~
A week after Sunnydale, Giles quickly leaves the last meeting their group will have before dividing into American and British units of the Watchers Council.
“Yo, Giles!” Faith catches up to him and grabs his arm, pulling them both to a halt. “Hey, chill for a mo, bro. I wanted to talk to you about London.”
“Faith.”
“What - you think I won’t fit in?” She points to herself. “English guys are always going on about hot American chicks, and I’m like wicked hot, so what’s the prob?”
How can he tell her he spent most of the day alienating everyone he cares for, pushing them away for their own good? That being near him is nothing short of dangerous?
“What? What is it?”
He puts a hand on her shoulder. “You won’t be able to come to London with us.”
“Wha-huh? But … but you and Buffy, and we get along kinda now, and …”
Buffy’s hurt face, Willow’s anger as she left, Xander’s resignation - he’s tired of people looking at him, and Faith’s large liquid eyes show the vulnerability she always fights to hide. “Faith, with your record, there’s no way to get you through security. You not only don’t have a passport, you also can’t get one.”
She grins winningly. “Well, maybe not a legal one, but -”
“Faith,” he interrupts her, voice grown soft, “I … I’m sorry.” He hurries away.
Faith’s brown eyes look just like Eliska’s when he didn’t save her.
~~~
~~~
~~~
2
She sings, opens up and lets music pour from her, a complex blend of simultaneous notes.
The handful of humans in the crowd wince at the note of discord that runs underneath the main melody, at the way it scrapes along the brain. They leave. Scorchers is truly a demon club now.
The crowd howls its appreciation, a heady roar that fills the dark warehouse and washes back over her, so that she sings ever louder.
Words dissolve, mean nothing - the layered harmonics are all.
Demons dance, frenzied, and their chant becomes her name: “Femme, Femme, Femme!”
~~~
Faith leaps away from a claw swipe to the head and yells, “I thought you said this guy was your contact.”
“He is.” Giles sidesteps the lashing tail.
“Well then, you and I got sure got different ways of defining ‘helpful.’”
The creature screams and flails its red claw spikes, showing no signs of understanding, though it’s known English for years.
“Just keep him busy, all right,” he says.
“Sure, Steed.”
Giles grins. He should have know he’d never live down the remark he’d made about them being The Avengers once she made him show her the Peel episodes.
Faith launches into a series of high kicks while Giles edges behind the demon with his sword.
The Watro groans repeatedly - noises that resemble no demon language known to Giles.
Leaping a tail swipe, he adjusts the angle and plunges the sword home.
With one last wail, the demon falls face first to the floor, twitching for a few moments before going still.
Faith leans panting against the wall and gestures to where the Watro lies, sword standing upright. “I can’t believe you stabbed him in the butt. That’s wicked gross.”
“That, on a Watro, is where their dorsal nerve ganglion is located. It’s the only place with any vulnerability.”
“So.” She pushes her hair out of her face. “The peaceful demon we were going to get intell from on why peaceful demons are going all freaky violent-like was … freaky violent-like.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew this one for how long?”
“Twelve years, and there had never once been any signs of aggression on its part.”
She walks over and pulls the sword from its butt one handed. “Then we find out what made it like this.”
~~~
“I see, yes. Cheers.” Giles sets down the phone and looks over at Faith.
“That,” she points at his face, “don’t look like good news.”
“Yes, well, it’s not.” He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Robson has no idea what’s causing this. The only useful information he has for us is that, while it’s affecting a wide range of demon species, it appears to be confined to London.”
“That’s something at least.” She jumps up to begin pacing the length of the lounge. After a few moments, she stops and asks, “You, umm … you gonna be calling in the gang on this one?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, the Scoobs. You gonna call them?” Her voice sounds forcefully cheery.
He puts his glasses back on, but her back’s to him, so he still can’t see her expression. Buffy’s face flashes through his mind, angry and hurt as he tells her they can’t work together anymore. “No, we’re … ah … we’re still not talking.”
Faith doesn’t turn around. “Oh.”
“Besides, I’ve already got a partner.”
She swivels around on one heel, smiling. “Damn straight, you do.”
~~~
“How did things go with the Latere demon the coven found?”
“Fine - all taken care of.” There’s an odd note to Robin’s voice that the long-distance connection does nothing to hide.
“So you got a team to it right as it was manifesting and were able to take it out?”
“Not exactly …”
“Well?”
“I put Faith on it. She … she handled things before they got to that point.”
Handled? Good god, that means … “You did what? Why wasn’t I consulted?”
“Look, Giles, I head up the Watcher’s Council in America, right? It was my jurisdiction, and I took care of it.”
“You made Faith kill someone while they were still human, and you call that taking care of it?” The First’s Angelus laughs and laughs in his mind.
“She did what she had to for the greater good. And isn’t that what the Council’s all about? Sometimes sacrifices must be -”
“Spare me your clichés.”
Robin snorts. “What can I say? I learned from the best.”
~~~
~~~
~~~
3
“Femme, my Femme, what have they done to you?”
She cradles one arm to her torso with the other, even as she smiles. “Oh, Papa, they just got so excited when I sang the new song you taught me. They didn’t mean to hurt me.”
He pulls her across the cracked concrete of the basement floor to the area with the brightest light. For long minutes, he chants, choreographed hand movements unraveling the shimmering strands that surround her. When he stops, she stands before him in her true form, a vaguely humanoid shape made of mismatched parts welded together along scar-tissue seams, her skin a crazy quilt of colors.
Seen clearly now, her arm dangles at her side, half ripped from its shoulder socket.
He hums, words emerging half under his breath. “Patchwork Girl, Patchwork Girl, I made you to be mine, to hand me the world.”
Tension leaves her at the sound. Her giggle - a supposedly happy sound - grates as it emerges from her oddly long neck, and her misshapen mouth says, “I like that song. It’s my song. My Papa song.”
“Yes it is.” He works at her shoulder, holding the arm in place while performing an incantation that slowly fuses the disparate flesh together. In between magical chants, he sings her song, over and over, occasionally shortening its one line to: “Patchwork Girl, hand me the world.”
~~~
“I feel like a broken record saying this, but shit, Giles, are you sure you’ve got the right place?” Faith points around them. “I been in a lot of demon bars, and I ain’t never seen one with candles and elevator music and people drinking little frou-frou drinks.”
Giles takes off his glasses and cleans them on the hem of his jumper before putting them back on. It does no good. The Stone and Truncheon pub, previously a rather rough establishment that catered to demons, is now a posh wine bar full of uptight investment bankers on the pull.
Yet the man who walks in from the back hasn’t changed a jot - a ruddy-complected blond with hair so light he doesn’t appear to have eyebrows who has the short, stocky build of a back-alley illegal boxer.
“Gary.” Giles waves him over to a quiet back corner table.
“Ripper, you old sod.” Gary cuffs him on the shoulder and leers at Faith. “And who might you be, love?”
“Faith.”
“I’ll just bet you are, yeah.”
“Gary,” Giles interrupts, “what the bloody hell happened?”
“Ripper, Ripper, what can I tell you? I was doing business, yeah, same as I’ve been doing for years now. Then all the sudden,” he slaps the back of a hand into the other palm, “the demons just stop coming.”
“You change the menu or something?” Faith pokes the martini list propped on the middle of the table.
“All of this came later.” He waves a hand to encompass the room with its little candles and light jazz. “I’m a businessman, yeah. Roll with the punches and what all. Had this Nehulian Priestess do the place over for me. Owed me one, if you know what I mean.” Gary gives an exaggerated wink.
Faith just flashes Gary her largest smile, and Giles almost snorts at how the man preens, straightening on his stool and waving the barkeep over to set a round of whiskies in front of them.
Giles raises his glass in silent toast before drinking. Like the host, it’s strong and rough, burning all the way down. Giles coughs. “You were saying?”
“Ripper, what, you think I’m going give you something with a little umbrella?” He laughs and slaps Giles on the back. “Anyways, I tell you I didn’t change a thing, yeah. And last month was normal - a spot of trouble here, a spot of trouble there, none of it anything I haven’t seen a thousand times before. What can I say? Demons can be a rowdy lot, yeah. But all the sudden I got blokes I served a thousand times rather rip my head off than lift a pint in my pub.”
“Any idea why?”
“I’m a business man, yeah. Gotta suss out the competition. So I put Benny on it.” He hooks a thumb at the young man behind the bar. “He was seeing this Chickla Demon, yeah. You know, the ones what with the extra tongue where it counts, if you know what I mean.” More winking.
Faith laughs, even as Giles suppresses a huff of irritation.
“She took him to this club supposed to be the next big thing, yeah.”
“And?”
“He only went a few nights. Said it was good at first, real racy, then this new act started, some singer, yeah. Demons went right crazy for her, they did. Benny couldn’t stand it though and stopped going. Didn’t matter much - his demon bird dropped him the next day anyway. Said she wanted to blow his head off, and not in the fun way, if you get what I mean.”
“This place gotta name?” Faith asks.
“Scorchers. It’s in one of those old warehouses over in Hackney, not far from where Ethan and your lot used to play back in the day, Ripper. Right dodgy now, yeah.”
“It was fairly dodgy back then too.” Giles stands, sliding fifty quid under his glass, pretending to pay for the drinks. It’s not like there were any demons here to see and suspect anything, but old habits and all that rot.
Gary gives a nod as the note disappears, winking at Faith one last time. “You come back and see old Gary sometime, love.”
“Tell you what. You get this place back to normal, and I’m here. This …” Faith looks around and cracks a few knuckles by grinding a fist into her other palm. “This is a little quiet for how I usually roll.”
The table beside them orders another round of white-wine spritzers, and Gary’s smile fades. “I hear you, love.”
“Cheers, mate.” Giles nods to Gary and follows Faith to the door.
Once on the street, she says, still joking and friendly, “So a nickname like Ripper and hanging out in places that are ‘dodgy.’” She makes air quotes. “This have anything to do with that ink you’re sporting?”
Giles’s stomach twists. Damn Gary and his inability to keep his gob shut. “Yes.” He forces the word out.
Her voice loses its bluster and comes out quieter, almost hesitant. “You wanna talk about it?”
“No.” He watches her face freeze into stone and sighs. “I mean, not right now. Suffice it to say that you’re not the only person to have made rather unfortunate … mistakes in your youth.”
“Gotchya.” But as silly as the word is, it can’t hide the undercurrent of hurt in her voice.
~~~
Rumors build over time into a whole picture - a rogue Slayer, a right nasty piece of work with both money and power. Portents indicate she’ll usher in an apocalypse if left unchecked.
If left alive.
Magics can’t get to this Lady Genevieve Savidge, and the Council no longer has a wet-works team. ‘Except for you, dear Rupert,’ a voice whispers in his mind. He can’t tell who it sounds more like, the First, in Marcus Travers’s voice, or himself.
He hates himself for remembering Faith and how Robin has already used her like this.
But he’ll use her all the same. He tells himself that he’ll set her free afterwards, that such will make it a worthwhile endeavor for her, as if a price can be put on killing.
Ben smiles at him in a cemetery in Prague.
~~~
~~~
~~~
4
“It’s time, my Femme.”
“Yes, Papa?”
“There’s one last song for you to learn.”
She frowns, her pretty face twisting. “I thought you said the other song was the best song.”
“No.” He puts in ear plugs and turns to face her, a stack of scribbled-upon paper in hand. “There’s one even better.”
~~~
“This place sure is hopping.” Faith whispers as they peek around a corner to watch numerous demons of all types flood into the entrance of Scorchers a good thirty meters away.
“So it would seem. And it’s quite odd - Apythas are standing next to Rankadons and Jaxblatts with Vorlutzes.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, they’re blood-feud enemies and have been for centuries. Whatever’s doing this is overriding some amazingly primal drives the demons have.”
“Guess we better go figure it out then, huh?” She shifts her weight with a rustle of clothing.
He puts a hand on her arm. “Faith, wait. There are hundreds of demons in that place, perhaps over a thousand. There’s no way we can do anything more tonight than scout out the location.”
“I get that.” She pulls out her mobile and shows it to him. “Already got Sunita’s number for when we have to call in the cavalry.”
“Right.” Giles is a bit surprised - he’s not used to thinking of Faith as anything but impetuous, but that’s no longer fair on his part. She’s changed a great deal in recent years. Besides which, he should have thought to check in with Robson himself. “Good thinking.”
She flashes him a grin. “I’ll go left. You go right.”
He nods, and she fades into the shadows behind them, taking the longer route, which he has to admit is also wise since she’s the one with Slayer stamina.
Once there’s a lull in activity in front of the warehouse entrance, Giles moves quickly across the open road to the alley that abuts it. The brick feels rough against his hands as he presses himself to the wall, trying to quiet his breathing enough to hear if he’s been discovered.
Nothing.
Any lights the alley might have had have long since burned out or been purposefully broken. He tries not to make any noise, but finds himself occasionally crinkling rubbish underfoot and once kicking a glass bottle so that it skitters across the pavement.
Giles freezes, even as he doubts anything heard, what with the noise coming through the warehouse wall, the low rumble of a multitude of voices emerging from vocal cords much larger than that of humans.
Really, he should just get on with it. He hasn’t found anything, the solid brick not offering even the smallest window or door, and this cautious sneaking about isn’t speeding matters.
Moving more rapidly, he turns the corner at the back of the building after a quick look, spying a rusted steel door ahead. The knob turns freely to open on a hallway lined with doors, an open one at the end showing a set of dark stairs leading down.
Giles thinks this is much more like it and steps forwards, when - bang - the world swirls into darkness and pain.
~~~
Light, hazy yet painful, stabs into his eyes, and Giles squints to see a man standing over him. A familiar man. “Weatherby?”
“Giles.”
He jerks upright to find his hands bound to the wall of a dirty, bunker-like room with no windows. “Dear lord, man. I thought you were -”
Weatherby laughs, a high, unpleasant sound made more so by the strange acoustics of the room. “Thought I’d slink away like a whipped dog when the Council threw me out?”
“But you … How?” His head pounds.
“What?” Weatherby sets a hand on the wall and leans over to get right up in Giles’s face. “Thought you lot of Watchers were special? Never thought a knob like me could learn magics?” That laugh again. “Turns out all those contacts I made on the Continent were good for more than you’d have thought.” He pushes away and begins to pace the room.
“Well then, why?”
“To show the lot of you, why else? I did everything, absolutely bloody everything, Travers and his father before him wanted done without either of them having to get their precious poncey hands dirty. And what thanks do I get?”
“You killed a Potential and her Watcher.”
“I’d been told they’d been turned!”
“No, you’d been told they might have been and to check.”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter!” He yells the latter bit and speeds up his pacing.
Giles watches the manic energy of the other man’s movements, the twitches, the little grunts, and realizes that Weatherby - never the most stable of sorts to begin with, having done wet-works for years - has gone right ‘round the twist.
“It’s a shame I was too late to take care of the rest of them,” Weatherby says. “Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I returned from the Continent to find Headquarters nothing more than a pile of rubble.”
“You did this all for some … some twisted notion of revenge? Good god, man! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Of course.” He stops pacing, and his grin grows impossibly wider. “I’ve just set every demon in London loose, returned them to their base nature.” He throws his arms wide. “Tonight they’ll kill everyone, and you lot will see that I was right all along, that you have to kill anyone who might be a threat - anyone!”
~~~
The look on her face once they’ve cleaned up from ‘taking care’ of Genevieve and Roden is composed - not a hard mask, but composed.
He’d just had her perform one of the hardest actions he could have asked, and she’s … all right.
Perhaps there’s a way to work together, to …
Ben’s voice laughs as the First. ‘You are my greatest disciple.’
He shrugs off the thought and hands her payment for … for killing.
Instead of taking the passport and getting as far from him as possible, she talks about not wanting to walk away from the Slayer life, determination filling her face.
And he can’t help but blurt out his offer of partnership, his desire for equality, that he’ll be Steed to her Peel instead of falling back into the usual Watcher/Slayer dynamic.
Her smile, tentative as it is, quiets the echoes of the First’s laughter within him.
~~~
~~~
~~~
5
She sings the song, the new song, and it pours from her throat, taking on a life of its own. A red haze flows outwards with the notes, curling around the room, bathing the writhing mass of demons.
The crowd howls, tearing at each other, tearing at themselves.
Note after discordantly layered note, she continues, power pulsing through her, and she’s radiant, the center.
When they start to chant, it takes a while for the repeated word to synchronize enough to emerge from chaos.
It’s not her name anymore.
“Kill, kill, kill,” pulses in syncopated beat as she sings on and on.
~~~
He’s still a bit woozy, but Giles grits his teeth enough to say, “We’ll stop you.”
“What, you and your one Slayer? Your Buffy?” He laughs, backhanding Giles across the cheekbone, pain flaring through his eye socket. Pointing upwards to where a continuous clamor comes from Scorchers, Weatherby says, “Daft sod. My little girl can control legions.”
Giles almost laughs, picturing the look on Weatherby’s face once he realizes how wrong he is about the number of Slayers they can bring to bear. But just as he’s opening his mouth, there’s a sharp snap, then the metal door hits a wall with a hard clang followed by the pounding of boots running down the stairs.
Faith stands at the bottom, glaring, battle axe firmly in hand.
Giles smiles at the gobsmacked look on Weatherby’s face. “Who said anything about it being Buffy?”
“You!” Weatherby yells.
Faith’s forehead creases in puzzlement, then she leaps forwards, a kick to the stomach flinging Weatherby out of her way.
“Giles!” Her voice cracks on the single syllable as she bends over him, eyes full of worry. It’s everything like how Buffy used to look at him and nothing like it.
“Thank god.” He holds his hands out for her to cut the rope.
“What? You didn’t think I was gonna come and get you?” Hurt flashes quickly across her features before they harden. She is marble, cold and beautifully fierce in her anger.
“Not …” He reaches to touch her cheek. It’s warm. “Not a lack in you, Faith.” A lack in me, he wants to say but can’t.
She turns before he can see if she understands. “Where’d he go?”
Giles tries to stand and wavers a bit, steadying himself against the cold concrete wall. “You go after him. I’ll be all right.”
“Can’t.” She turns to nudge a shoulder up into his armpit, taking his weight. “Sunita’s got the troops surrounding the place ready to go at it. But there’s this freaking horrific noise, so no one can go inside. As soon as I get you out, where gonna hit the place with grenades.”
“Grenades.” He shuffles, trying to mount the stairs.
“You gotta problem with that?”
“Some of the demons are no threat to humans under normal circumstances.”
Faith grunts as she lifts him up another riser. “I think we’re pretty freaking far from normal circumstances, even with all that British understatement crap.”
“True. But if we win today …” He winces as his ankle hits smacks against a step he could have sworn was lower. “If we kill them all, the repercussions from the demon world would be … extreme.”
“As in bad?”
“As in very bad indeed.”
Faith nods and leans him against the wall at the top of the stairs to get a better grip around his middle. “Let’s go get him then.”
Instead of outside, she opens another door, and a torrent of noise claws across his brain. He falls to the floor, headache redoubled, Faith stumbling beside him.
He can barely move, barely think, nerves and muscles lit red with … with wrongness. Still, when she tugs on his arm, trying to get him up, he shrugs her off enough to point to the front of the stage, to where a creature stands glowing with light, screeching out a spell that shivers red through the air as if it hurts even that.
Faith lumbers drunkenly forwards, arms out as if fighting a fierce wind, and trips as she gets closer to the sound. But she turns it into a roll that awkwardly tackles the form to the ground.
It’s enough - the sound stops immediately.
The glowing shape dulls and clarifies into a horribly mismatched jumble of body parts crisscrossed with raged lines of red scar tissue.
Giles watches, horrified by what he thinks it might be, as Faith jerks herself away, hand held to mouth.
“Papa.” Scraped nails and broken glass over little-girl voice, the creature calls, arms out and pleading.
Weatherby emerges from the shadows at the other side of the stage to point to the mass of demons, whose chant of ‘kill’ is scrambling into chaotic noise. “I made you. Now do what I say! Sing!”
“Papaaaaaa,” she wails.
“That’s right, my Flickenfemme.” He kneels in front of her, just out of her reach. “I am your papa. I am your creator. I am your everything. I made you to do this, just this, so you will SING!”
“But it hurts.”
It’s difficult, what with the confusion of disparate limbs, but Giles soon sees that both legs bend at odd enough angles to imply broken bones.
Weatherby, face twisted in a sneer of disgust, approaches the creature, who lets out one more quiet “Papa?” before he twists her neck with a sudden crack.
Standing, he starts for the rear exit.
“Not so fast.” Faith plants a hand on his shoulder and whirls him around so quickly that his face hits her planted fist with a whack of force.
From the floor, Weatherby looks up at her standing over him and laughs. “I know you.” He spits blood at her feet. “Couldn’t kill old Smithy when you had the chance back in Sunnydale. Won’t kill me now.”
Understanding blooms across Faith’s face, and she smiles, a baring of teeth. “Got a news flash for you, pal.” She pulls a knife from her boot. “Mighta been the same car, but it wasn’t me behind the wheel that time.”
Giles has to laugh at the look on the other man’s face - one part confusion, two parts fear.
Weatherby never loses the look as he kicks out at Faith’s knees, toppling her so that she falls to the side, where she scissors up with a sharp flick of her legs. She blocks his next series of punches - solar plexus, face, face - and connects, whipping his head back with one good jab of crunching cartilage and bone. A snap kick to the knee, and Weatherby’s on the ground again before a backhand across the jaw finishes the job. Holding him in place with a knee on his gut, she pauses, knife at the ready.
Faith glances over at Giles, raising an eyebrow and tipping her head towards Weatherby.
And he can picture it. At a nod from him, the knife slicing through the air to plunge into the chest, to gash open the throat. Blood spurting red, so red, over her hand.
‘Monster … perfect assassin.’ Yet he looks at Faith with her hand paused, not taking the kill, and he shoves the First’s voice down easily for the first time.
That’s not who she needs to be.
He answers her with a small shake of his head.
That’s not who he needs to be either.
~~~
Since they stop the spell before its completion, there are no lingering effects on the audience, and many of the demons simply slink away as soon as they’re able to disentangle themselves from the crowded club. Still, the ones who do set off on rampages offer Sunita and the rest of the London Slayers ‘a fair bit of sport, what’ as she says before leaping back into the fight with a happy grin.
It also turns out Robson has a spell-proof, very unpadded cell for Weatherby to pass his days in.
So it’s only two in the morning by the time Giles and Faith stumble across the threshold of his house and into waiting kitchen chairs, each sporting an icepack. It seems decadently early, all things considered. Most near disasters usually keep him out until at least four.
Faith groans and moves the ice to the other side of her knee. “So that guy was one of the Watchers sent after me in Sunnydale?”
“Yes. Although he … well, he was wet-works actually. Strangely enough, it turns out that I’m not the blackest sheep the original Council had.”
“You?” Faith laughs. “You gotta be kidding me. You’re,” she waves her hand up and down, encompassing him, “a little gray maybe, what with you sporting ink and all.”
His hand covers the Mark of Egyon on his arm as the First whispers through his mind, ‘Every time you lie, you are the one who makes evil in this world.’ Giles clears his throat. “Faith … there are things I have to tell you, things I’ve done that -”
Holding up a hand, she interrupts. “Look, I know you ain’t no freaking saint. Hell, who is? But I been around enough to know you’re okay.”
He lets out a breath and smiles. “You’re not so bad yourself.” Taking off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose, he sinks into the chair.
After a bit, Faith asks, “What about the girl, er, thing, er … girl-thing?”
“The Flickenfemme is an old, old spell that allows a body created from various … parts to be animated. It turns out the use of it inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.”
Her forehead creases. “But wasn’t that monster wicked hard to kill and crap?”
“It’s a component of the spell that the creator can invest the creature with one principle ability. The Frankenstein progenitor had strength. This one could manipulate demon thoughts and emotions through song, which it was uniquely able to do by having three sets of vocal cords.”
“Three? Wicked gross!” She rocks back in her chair, balancing it on two legs. “And the femme part? I’ve seen Frankenstein on TV - the thing’s totally a dude.”
Giles takes off his ice pack to probe the back of his head. The swelling’s gone down, and the pain is manageable. He’s had, after all, a fair bit of experience with head trauma. “Yes, well, Shelley may have taken a few liberties, but the spell was only ever developed to create … females, which is why it’s called Flickenfemme - patchwork girl.”
“Don’t tell me - it was made by some guy from way back who couldn’t get laid. How freaking sick.” Faith pauses, then adds, “Kinda like Weatherby, huh? Freaking sicko, that one.”
“Quite.” She’s so very right. Being callous enough to create a Flickenfemme speaks volumes, let alone the subsequent events. Weatherby … well, there’s a real monster for you.
Needing a drink, he says, “Beer?”
“Hell, no! I think it’s time we broke out the hard stuff. Where you been keeping the whisky, Steed?”
He lets out a sigh of relief. “The drinks cabinet in the lounge.” When she starts to rise, he waves her back into her seat and smiles. “You keep icing that knee. I’ll get it.”
~~~
The first weekend of their new partnership, they settle in front of the television in his lounge, and Giles presses play on the remote.
The screen fills with witty banter, with mysteries solved and Emma Peel karate chopping her way through any bad guys not put down by John Steed’s umbrella or Bowler hat.
Giles finds himself laughing, glancing over to see if Faith’s enjoying the show. She’s demolishing a packet of Lamb and Mint crisps, curled on the end of the couch with her feet tucked under her. As the episode proceeds, he catches her grinning every so often.
When the credits roll, she says, “So that’s what you meant when you called us Peel and Steed.”
“Yes.”
“They’re pretty freaking cool, huh?”
“I like to think so.”
She stands, wadding the crisps packet into a ball with the loud crinkle of plastic. “I’m gonna get a beer.”
Once she’s left the room, he sighs. Well, what did he expect? That she’d get what he meant? He pops open the tray of the DVD player, fumbling the case with his other hand.
From behind him, Faith asks, “You got any more of that Avengers stuff?” She’s standing in the doorway, two Boddingtons in hand.
Surprised, he holds up the box. “All fifty-one of the Emma Peel episodes.”
“Fifty-one? Dayumn, they were together for a while.”
He pushes the DVD back in and settles into his end of the couch, accepting a beer. “Yes.” He smiles as the opening theme song plays. “Yes, they were.”
Author: ubiquirk
Fandom: BtVS
Rating: PG13
Genre: drama, action/adventure
Word Count: ~6700
Characters: Faith, Giles
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set post “Chosen,” just after “No Future for You.” Written for summer_of_giles 2009. Third in the Avengers Series. Although each story can stand alone, this one is the direct sequel to both ‘Feet of Clay’ and ‘New Kind of Same’ and references events in each. Much thanks to my beta firefly_124.
Summary: Each estranged in their lives, Faith and Giles have formed a ‘working partnership between equals.’ But something’s got the demons of London in an uproar, and the duo’s first big case as ‘Peel and Steed’ proves tougher than expected … on multiple levels.
1
Steps echo unevenly off the dank walls of a dark basement stairway, clip, clop, clip, clop, as a large shape moves with the dancing step of a little girl.
A hand reaches out of shadow, grabbing to pull the new arrival into a wedge of light, where it shrinks down to coalesce out of darkness into a beautiful young woman with angular features contrasted by full lips, all coffee-warm skin offset by shockingly white hair.
“Papa!” Her voice a layer of sharp notes cutting through lushness.
“Well, my Femme. How did you do?”
“Oh, they loved me, Papa! I am to come back every night.”
“I’m sure you are.” He steps forward, a plain white man marked by sunken cheeks and cold, cold eyes. He pats her hair as she smiles at him. “I’m sure you are.”
~~~
“Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap,” Faith yells as she takes off running down Gerrard Street. “Why didn’t you tell me these things were so freaking fast?”
“I …” Huffing to keep up, Giles watches the Xeeblant Demon rabbit around a group of pedestrians. “I didn’t think we’d actually find one at Wong Kei’s - I just thought everyone was complaining about the wait staff as usual.”
“So we were really just going out for Chinese?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll teach you not to be so cheap next time.” She flashes him a cheeky grin and bounds ahead, scattering a huddle of tourists stopped dead in the middle of the pavement.
Giles follows, quick as he can, mumbling apologies as he goes.
One of the men, an American by accent, loudly explains over the protesting squawks that it’s typical London - all rude actions covered by polite words.
Before Giles can remark on dozy pillocks taking up the entire thoroughfare, the demon dodges left across traffic, sending a scooter careening into the side of a black cab, which comes to a bouncing halt of hastily applied brakes.
With a series of leaps, Faith dances over the hood of the cab and tackles the Xeeblant into an alleyway.
A chaos of horns and yelling billows behind him, but all Giles can hear as he rounds the corner are the clacks and grunts of flesh hitting hard chitin.
Having shucked off its human guise, the bottle-green demon stands a good six feet tall, a whirl of multiple thin limbs that move spider quick. Three of these bat Faith across the alley to hit the wall with a smack of skull on brick.
Shaking off the shock, she steps forward and pivots, lashing a leg up in a high kick that snaps the insectile head to the side.
Righting itself, the demon chitters and grabs her with several tiny pincers to lift her above its head.
“Faith!” Giles yells and throws the iron dagger in her direction.
Her hand snaps it out of the air, and just as the Xeeblant gets her overhead, she lashes out and down, cleaving the braincase with a pulpy crunch of exoskeleton.
It collapses beneath her, and she tumbles off its slick side with enough force to take Giles out at the knees.
A wave of excited voices comes from the mouth of the alley - the middle of Chinatown isn’t exactly the most unpopulated place to go demon hunting in London.
Lying flat out on his back, Faith sprawled across his calves, the large Xeeblant carcass beside him not dissolving into a puddle of goo, Giles can’t help but laugh.
~~~
The door to his Islington terrace house slams closed behind her as Faith leans against it, laughing. “And … and I still can’t believe they bought it! Street theater!”
He grins. “Well, most of them were American.”
“Ha bloody ha,” she says in an English accent.
His mood chills. It’s the accent he taught her when he blackmailed her into killing a fellow Slayer. He turns to hide his face, shrugging out of his jacket and hanging it on a hook. Was this partnership nothing more than selfishness on his part now that he’d alienated Buffy? He looks at Faith standing before him, face open when she should be damning him for being …
For being exactly what the First wanted him to become.
The room fades as images of jumbled headstones swirl around him. ‘Monster’, the First’s Angelus voice whispers in his mind.
He realizes he’s been staring when Faith frowns a little and says, “Lighten up - it was just a joke.” She swats him on the arm and walks past.
He follows her into the kitchen. “Would you care for tea?”
“Nah, I’m gonna grab a beer.” Rooting in the refrigerator, she pulls out two bright-yellow cans of Boddington’s. “Want one?”
Setting down the electric kettle, he says, “God, yes.” He could really do with a whisky - or three - but beer is something of a routine for them, and he’s got used to drinking straight from the can like she does.
Faith’s face, which had been carefully neutral, wears a small smile as he accepts the beer.
It’s only been two months since Genevieve, since he and Faith declared themselves partners. This new ease between them feels … nice. And somewhat fragile.
Because he’s still not sure it’s safe - for her - to get close. She may have killed Genevieve by accident, but Giles killed Roden knowingly. ‘The only Watcher in the history of the Council to have been considered for the wet-works team.’ He shoves the First’s voice from his thoughts and drinks quickly, downing half the can in one go.
“So. What was up with old bug boy there? Why were you surprised to see him if you’d been tipped off he was around?”
“It’s not that I was that surprised he was there, per se.” He takes a long swallow of bitter.
She cocks an eyebrow and waves a hand for him to get on with it.
“Xeeblants are one of the most peaceful demon species, often living and working in the midst of humans, usually in some capacity having to do with food preparation.”
“Ugh. Freaking big-ass bugs in the kitchen. Remind me to never eat out again like ever.”
“I think this falls directly in the ‘don’t know, can’t hurt’ category. Xeeblants are everywhere, and their glamours are typically so well crafted that you’d never guess they weren’t human.”
“Well, that one in the Chinese place was already looking kinda green when we got there, and it seems he missed the memo on being peaceful.”
“Which is what’s strange. We never should have seen his glamour slip, and he never should have hit that patron over the head with a tray. It’s all completely out of character.”
“And it sounds like it’s not the only thing weird going on around here.”
“What?” His can hits the table, a quick sound of surprise.
Faith takes a long pull on her Boddington’s, grinning around the can, making him wait. With a satisfied sigh and a wipe of her mouth, she sets down the beer, smile still firmly in place. “While you were off fooling all those people, I talked to the London Slayers you called to do clean-up.”
“And?”
“Sunita says they’re being called out an awful lot lately. More demons in more places - it’s like good cell phone service, only evil.”
“Did she have any idea what was stirring them up?”
“Nope.” She tapped her can against his and raised it in a toast. “Which means we get to find out.”
~~~
A week after Sunnydale, Giles quickly leaves the last meeting their group will have before dividing into American and British units of the Watchers Council.
“Yo, Giles!” Faith catches up to him and grabs his arm, pulling them both to a halt. “Hey, chill for a mo, bro. I wanted to talk to you about London.”
“Faith.”
“What - you think I won’t fit in?” She points to herself. “English guys are always going on about hot American chicks, and I’m like wicked hot, so what’s the prob?”
How can he tell her he spent most of the day alienating everyone he cares for, pushing them away for their own good? That being near him is nothing short of dangerous?
“What? What is it?”
He puts a hand on her shoulder. “You won’t be able to come to London with us.”
“Wha-huh? But … but you and Buffy, and we get along kinda now, and …”
Buffy’s hurt face, Willow’s anger as she left, Xander’s resignation - he’s tired of people looking at him, and Faith’s large liquid eyes show the vulnerability she always fights to hide. “Faith, with your record, there’s no way to get you through security. You not only don’t have a passport, you also can’t get one.”
She grins winningly. “Well, maybe not a legal one, but -”
“Faith,” he interrupts her, voice grown soft, “I … I’m sorry.” He hurries away.
Faith’s brown eyes look just like Eliska’s when he didn’t save her.
~~~
~~~
~~~
2
She sings, opens up and lets music pour from her, a complex blend of simultaneous notes.
The handful of humans in the crowd wince at the note of discord that runs underneath the main melody, at the way it scrapes along the brain. They leave. Scorchers is truly a demon club now.
The crowd howls its appreciation, a heady roar that fills the dark warehouse and washes back over her, so that she sings ever louder.
Words dissolve, mean nothing - the layered harmonics are all.
Demons dance, frenzied, and their chant becomes her name: “Femme, Femme, Femme!”
~~~
Faith leaps away from a claw swipe to the head and yells, “I thought you said this guy was your contact.”
“He is.” Giles sidesteps the lashing tail.
“Well then, you and I got sure got different ways of defining ‘helpful.’”
The creature screams and flails its red claw spikes, showing no signs of understanding, though it’s known English for years.
“Just keep him busy, all right,” he says.
“Sure, Steed.”
Giles grins. He should have know he’d never live down the remark he’d made about them being The Avengers once she made him show her the Peel episodes.
Faith launches into a series of high kicks while Giles edges behind the demon with his sword.
The Watro groans repeatedly - noises that resemble no demon language known to Giles.
Leaping a tail swipe, he adjusts the angle and plunges the sword home.
With one last wail, the demon falls face first to the floor, twitching for a few moments before going still.
Faith leans panting against the wall and gestures to where the Watro lies, sword standing upright. “I can’t believe you stabbed him in the butt. That’s wicked gross.”
“That, on a Watro, is where their dorsal nerve ganglion is located. It’s the only place with any vulnerability.”
“So.” She pushes her hair out of her face. “The peaceful demon we were going to get intell from on why peaceful demons are going all freaky violent-like was … freaky violent-like.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew this one for how long?”
“Twelve years, and there had never once been any signs of aggression on its part.”
She walks over and pulls the sword from its butt one handed. “Then we find out what made it like this.”
~~~
“I see, yes. Cheers.” Giles sets down the phone and looks over at Faith.
“That,” she points at his face, “don’t look like good news.”
“Yes, well, it’s not.” He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Robson has no idea what’s causing this. The only useful information he has for us is that, while it’s affecting a wide range of demon species, it appears to be confined to London.”
“That’s something at least.” She jumps up to begin pacing the length of the lounge. After a few moments, she stops and asks, “You, umm … you gonna be calling in the gang on this one?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, the Scoobs. You gonna call them?” Her voice sounds forcefully cheery.
He puts his glasses back on, but her back’s to him, so he still can’t see her expression. Buffy’s face flashes through his mind, angry and hurt as he tells her they can’t work together anymore. “No, we’re … ah … we’re still not talking.”
Faith doesn’t turn around. “Oh.”
“Besides, I’ve already got a partner.”
She swivels around on one heel, smiling. “Damn straight, you do.”
~~~
“How did things go with the Latere demon the coven found?”
“Fine - all taken care of.” There’s an odd note to Robin’s voice that the long-distance connection does nothing to hide.
“So you got a team to it right as it was manifesting and were able to take it out?”
“Not exactly …”
“Well?”
“I put Faith on it. She … she handled things before they got to that point.”
Handled? Good god, that means … “You did what? Why wasn’t I consulted?”
“Look, Giles, I head up the Watcher’s Council in America, right? It was my jurisdiction, and I took care of it.”
“You made Faith kill someone while they were still human, and you call that taking care of it?” The First’s Angelus laughs and laughs in his mind.
“She did what she had to for the greater good. And isn’t that what the Council’s all about? Sometimes sacrifices must be -”
“Spare me your clichés.”
Robin snorts. “What can I say? I learned from the best.”
~~~
~~~
~~~
3
“Femme, my Femme, what have they done to you?”
She cradles one arm to her torso with the other, even as she smiles. “Oh, Papa, they just got so excited when I sang the new song you taught me. They didn’t mean to hurt me.”
He pulls her across the cracked concrete of the basement floor to the area with the brightest light. For long minutes, he chants, choreographed hand movements unraveling the shimmering strands that surround her. When he stops, she stands before him in her true form, a vaguely humanoid shape made of mismatched parts welded together along scar-tissue seams, her skin a crazy quilt of colors.
Seen clearly now, her arm dangles at her side, half ripped from its shoulder socket.
He hums, words emerging half under his breath. “Patchwork Girl, Patchwork Girl, I made you to be mine, to hand me the world.”
Tension leaves her at the sound. Her giggle - a supposedly happy sound - grates as it emerges from her oddly long neck, and her misshapen mouth says, “I like that song. It’s my song. My Papa song.”
“Yes it is.” He works at her shoulder, holding the arm in place while performing an incantation that slowly fuses the disparate flesh together. In between magical chants, he sings her song, over and over, occasionally shortening its one line to: “Patchwork Girl, hand me the world.”
~~~
“I feel like a broken record saying this, but shit, Giles, are you sure you’ve got the right place?” Faith points around them. “I been in a lot of demon bars, and I ain’t never seen one with candles and elevator music and people drinking little frou-frou drinks.”
Giles takes off his glasses and cleans them on the hem of his jumper before putting them back on. It does no good. The Stone and Truncheon pub, previously a rather rough establishment that catered to demons, is now a posh wine bar full of uptight investment bankers on the pull.
Yet the man who walks in from the back hasn’t changed a jot - a ruddy-complected blond with hair so light he doesn’t appear to have eyebrows who has the short, stocky build of a back-alley illegal boxer.
“Gary.” Giles waves him over to a quiet back corner table.
“Ripper, you old sod.” Gary cuffs him on the shoulder and leers at Faith. “And who might you be, love?”
“Faith.”
“I’ll just bet you are, yeah.”
“Gary,” Giles interrupts, “what the bloody hell happened?”
“Ripper, Ripper, what can I tell you? I was doing business, yeah, same as I’ve been doing for years now. Then all the sudden,” he slaps the back of a hand into the other palm, “the demons just stop coming.”
“You change the menu or something?” Faith pokes the martini list propped on the middle of the table.
“All of this came later.” He waves a hand to encompass the room with its little candles and light jazz. “I’m a businessman, yeah. Roll with the punches and what all. Had this Nehulian Priestess do the place over for me. Owed me one, if you know what I mean.” Gary gives an exaggerated wink.
Faith just flashes Gary her largest smile, and Giles almost snorts at how the man preens, straightening on his stool and waving the barkeep over to set a round of whiskies in front of them.
Giles raises his glass in silent toast before drinking. Like the host, it’s strong and rough, burning all the way down. Giles coughs. “You were saying?”
“Ripper, what, you think I’m going give you something with a little umbrella?” He laughs and slaps Giles on the back. “Anyways, I tell you I didn’t change a thing, yeah. And last month was normal - a spot of trouble here, a spot of trouble there, none of it anything I haven’t seen a thousand times before. What can I say? Demons can be a rowdy lot, yeah. But all the sudden I got blokes I served a thousand times rather rip my head off than lift a pint in my pub.”
“Any idea why?”
“I’m a business man, yeah. Gotta suss out the competition. So I put Benny on it.” He hooks a thumb at the young man behind the bar. “He was seeing this Chickla Demon, yeah. You know, the ones what with the extra tongue where it counts, if you know what I mean.” More winking.
Faith laughs, even as Giles suppresses a huff of irritation.
“She took him to this club supposed to be the next big thing, yeah.”
“And?”
“He only went a few nights. Said it was good at first, real racy, then this new act started, some singer, yeah. Demons went right crazy for her, they did. Benny couldn’t stand it though and stopped going. Didn’t matter much - his demon bird dropped him the next day anyway. Said she wanted to blow his head off, and not in the fun way, if you get what I mean.”
“This place gotta name?” Faith asks.
“Scorchers. It’s in one of those old warehouses over in Hackney, not far from where Ethan and your lot used to play back in the day, Ripper. Right dodgy now, yeah.”
“It was fairly dodgy back then too.” Giles stands, sliding fifty quid under his glass, pretending to pay for the drinks. It’s not like there were any demons here to see and suspect anything, but old habits and all that rot.
Gary gives a nod as the note disappears, winking at Faith one last time. “You come back and see old Gary sometime, love.”
“Tell you what. You get this place back to normal, and I’m here. This …” Faith looks around and cracks a few knuckles by grinding a fist into her other palm. “This is a little quiet for how I usually roll.”
The table beside them orders another round of white-wine spritzers, and Gary’s smile fades. “I hear you, love.”
“Cheers, mate.” Giles nods to Gary and follows Faith to the door.
Once on the street, she says, still joking and friendly, “So a nickname like Ripper and hanging out in places that are ‘dodgy.’” She makes air quotes. “This have anything to do with that ink you’re sporting?”
Giles’s stomach twists. Damn Gary and his inability to keep his gob shut. “Yes.” He forces the word out.
Her voice loses its bluster and comes out quieter, almost hesitant. “You wanna talk about it?”
“No.” He watches her face freeze into stone and sighs. “I mean, not right now. Suffice it to say that you’re not the only person to have made rather unfortunate … mistakes in your youth.”
“Gotchya.” But as silly as the word is, it can’t hide the undercurrent of hurt in her voice.
~~~
Rumors build over time into a whole picture - a rogue Slayer, a right nasty piece of work with both money and power. Portents indicate she’ll usher in an apocalypse if left unchecked.
If left alive.
Magics can’t get to this Lady Genevieve Savidge, and the Council no longer has a wet-works team. ‘Except for you, dear Rupert,’ a voice whispers in his mind. He can’t tell who it sounds more like, the First, in Marcus Travers’s voice, or himself.
He hates himself for remembering Faith and how Robin has already used her like this.
But he’ll use her all the same. He tells himself that he’ll set her free afterwards, that such will make it a worthwhile endeavor for her, as if a price can be put on killing.
Ben smiles at him in a cemetery in Prague.
~~~
~~~
~~~
4
“It’s time, my Femme.”
“Yes, Papa?”
“There’s one last song for you to learn.”
She frowns, her pretty face twisting. “I thought you said the other song was the best song.”
“No.” He puts in ear plugs and turns to face her, a stack of scribbled-upon paper in hand. “There’s one even better.”
~~~
“This place sure is hopping.” Faith whispers as they peek around a corner to watch numerous demons of all types flood into the entrance of Scorchers a good thirty meters away.
“So it would seem. And it’s quite odd - Apythas are standing next to Rankadons and Jaxblatts with Vorlutzes.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, they’re blood-feud enemies and have been for centuries. Whatever’s doing this is overriding some amazingly primal drives the demons have.”
“Guess we better go figure it out then, huh?” She shifts her weight with a rustle of clothing.
He puts a hand on her arm. “Faith, wait. There are hundreds of demons in that place, perhaps over a thousand. There’s no way we can do anything more tonight than scout out the location.”
“I get that.” She pulls out her mobile and shows it to him. “Already got Sunita’s number for when we have to call in the cavalry.”
“Right.” Giles is a bit surprised - he’s not used to thinking of Faith as anything but impetuous, but that’s no longer fair on his part. She’s changed a great deal in recent years. Besides which, he should have thought to check in with Robson himself. “Good thinking.”
She flashes him a grin. “I’ll go left. You go right.”
He nods, and she fades into the shadows behind them, taking the longer route, which he has to admit is also wise since she’s the one with Slayer stamina.
Once there’s a lull in activity in front of the warehouse entrance, Giles moves quickly across the open road to the alley that abuts it. The brick feels rough against his hands as he presses himself to the wall, trying to quiet his breathing enough to hear if he’s been discovered.
Nothing.
Any lights the alley might have had have long since burned out or been purposefully broken. He tries not to make any noise, but finds himself occasionally crinkling rubbish underfoot and once kicking a glass bottle so that it skitters across the pavement.
Giles freezes, even as he doubts anything heard, what with the noise coming through the warehouse wall, the low rumble of a multitude of voices emerging from vocal cords much larger than that of humans.
Really, he should just get on with it. He hasn’t found anything, the solid brick not offering even the smallest window or door, and this cautious sneaking about isn’t speeding matters.
Moving more rapidly, he turns the corner at the back of the building after a quick look, spying a rusted steel door ahead. The knob turns freely to open on a hallway lined with doors, an open one at the end showing a set of dark stairs leading down.
Giles thinks this is much more like it and steps forwards, when - bang - the world swirls into darkness and pain.
~~~
Light, hazy yet painful, stabs into his eyes, and Giles squints to see a man standing over him. A familiar man. “Weatherby?”
“Giles.”
He jerks upright to find his hands bound to the wall of a dirty, bunker-like room with no windows. “Dear lord, man. I thought you were -”
Weatherby laughs, a high, unpleasant sound made more so by the strange acoustics of the room. “Thought I’d slink away like a whipped dog when the Council threw me out?”
“But you … How?” His head pounds.
“What?” Weatherby sets a hand on the wall and leans over to get right up in Giles’s face. “Thought you lot of Watchers were special? Never thought a knob like me could learn magics?” That laugh again. “Turns out all those contacts I made on the Continent were good for more than you’d have thought.” He pushes away and begins to pace the room.
“Well then, why?”
“To show the lot of you, why else? I did everything, absolutely bloody everything, Travers and his father before him wanted done without either of them having to get their precious poncey hands dirty. And what thanks do I get?”
“You killed a Potential and her Watcher.”
“I’d been told they’d been turned!”
“No, you’d been told they might have been and to check.”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter!” He yells the latter bit and speeds up his pacing.
Giles watches the manic energy of the other man’s movements, the twitches, the little grunts, and realizes that Weatherby - never the most stable of sorts to begin with, having done wet-works for years - has gone right ‘round the twist.
“It’s a shame I was too late to take care of the rest of them,” Weatherby says. “Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I returned from the Continent to find Headquarters nothing more than a pile of rubble.”
“You did this all for some … some twisted notion of revenge? Good god, man! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Of course.” He stops pacing, and his grin grows impossibly wider. “I’ve just set every demon in London loose, returned them to their base nature.” He throws his arms wide. “Tonight they’ll kill everyone, and you lot will see that I was right all along, that you have to kill anyone who might be a threat - anyone!”
~~~
The look on her face once they’ve cleaned up from ‘taking care’ of Genevieve and Roden is composed - not a hard mask, but composed.
He’d just had her perform one of the hardest actions he could have asked, and she’s … all right.
Perhaps there’s a way to work together, to …
Ben’s voice laughs as the First. ‘You are my greatest disciple.’
He shrugs off the thought and hands her payment for … for killing.
Instead of taking the passport and getting as far from him as possible, she talks about not wanting to walk away from the Slayer life, determination filling her face.
And he can’t help but blurt out his offer of partnership, his desire for equality, that he’ll be Steed to her Peel instead of falling back into the usual Watcher/Slayer dynamic.
Her smile, tentative as it is, quiets the echoes of the First’s laughter within him.
~~~
~~~
~~~
5
She sings the song, the new song, and it pours from her throat, taking on a life of its own. A red haze flows outwards with the notes, curling around the room, bathing the writhing mass of demons.
The crowd howls, tearing at each other, tearing at themselves.
Note after discordantly layered note, she continues, power pulsing through her, and she’s radiant, the center.
When they start to chant, it takes a while for the repeated word to synchronize enough to emerge from chaos.
It’s not her name anymore.
“Kill, kill, kill,” pulses in syncopated beat as she sings on and on.
~~~
He’s still a bit woozy, but Giles grits his teeth enough to say, “We’ll stop you.”
“What, you and your one Slayer? Your Buffy?” He laughs, backhanding Giles across the cheekbone, pain flaring through his eye socket. Pointing upwards to where a continuous clamor comes from Scorchers, Weatherby says, “Daft sod. My little girl can control legions.”
Giles almost laughs, picturing the look on Weatherby’s face once he realizes how wrong he is about the number of Slayers they can bring to bear. But just as he’s opening his mouth, there’s a sharp snap, then the metal door hits a wall with a hard clang followed by the pounding of boots running down the stairs.
Faith stands at the bottom, glaring, battle axe firmly in hand.
Giles smiles at the gobsmacked look on Weatherby’s face. “Who said anything about it being Buffy?”
“You!” Weatherby yells.
Faith’s forehead creases in puzzlement, then she leaps forwards, a kick to the stomach flinging Weatherby out of her way.
“Giles!” Her voice cracks on the single syllable as she bends over him, eyes full of worry. It’s everything like how Buffy used to look at him and nothing like it.
“Thank god.” He holds his hands out for her to cut the rope.
“What? You didn’t think I was gonna come and get you?” Hurt flashes quickly across her features before they harden. She is marble, cold and beautifully fierce in her anger.
“Not …” He reaches to touch her cheek. It’s warm. “Not a lack in you, Faith.” A lack in me, he wants to say but can’t.
She turns before he can see if she understands. “Where’d he go?”
Giles tries to stand and wavers a bit, steadying himself against the cold concrete wall. “You go after him. I’ll be all right.”
“Can’t.” She turns to nudge a shoulder up into his armpit, taking his weight. “Sunita’s got the troops surrounding the place ready to go at it. But there’s this freaking horrific noise, so no one can go inside. As soon as I get you out, where gonna hit the place with grenades.”
“Grenades.” He shuffles, trying to mount the stairs.
“You gotta problem with that?”
“Some of the demons are no threat to humans under normal circumstances.”
Faith grunts as she lifts him up another riser. “I think we’re pretty freaking far from normal circumstances, even with all that British understatement crap.”
“True. But if we win today …” He winces as his ankle hits smacks against a step he could have sworn was lower. “If we kill them all, the repercussions from the demon world would be … extreme.”
“As in bad?”
“As in very bad indeed.”
Faith nods and leans him against the wall at the top of the stairs to get a better grip around his middle. “Let’s go get him then.”
Instead of outside, she opens another door, and a torrent of noise claws across his brain. He falls to the floor, headache redoubled, Faith stumbling beside him.
He can barely move, barely think, nerves and muscles lit red with … with wrongness. Still, when she tugs on his arm, trying to get him up, he shrugs her off enough to point to the front of the stage, to where a creature stands glowing with light, screeching out a spell that shivers red through the air as if it hurts even that.
Faith lumbers drunkenly forwards, arms out as if fighting a fierce wind, and trips as she gets closer to the sound. But she turns it into a roll that awkwardly tackles the form to the ground.
It’s enough - the sound stops immediately.
The glowing shape dulls and clarifies into a horribly mismatched jumble of body parts crisscrossed with raged lines of red scar tissue.
Giles watches, horrified by what he thinks it might be, as Faith jerks herself away, hand held to mouth.
“Papa.” Scraped nails and broken glass over little-girl voice, the creature calls, arms out and pleading.
Weatherby emerges from the shadows at the other side of the stage to point to the mass of demons, whose chant of ‘kill’ is scrambling into chaotic noise. “I made you. Now do what I say! Sing!”
“Papaaaaaa,” she wails.
“That’s right, my Flickenfemme.” He kneels in front of her, just out of her reach. “I am your papa. I am your creator. I am your everything. I made you to do this, just this, so you will SING!”
“But it hurts.”
It’s difficult, what with the confusion of disparate limbs, but Giles soon sees that both legs bend at odd enough angles to imply broken bones.
Weatherby, face twisted in a sneer of disgust, approaches the creature, who lets out one more quiet “Papa?” before he twists her neck with a sudden crack.
Standing, he starts for the rear exit.
“Not so fast.” Faith plants a hand on his shoulder and whirls him around so quickly that his face hits her planted fist with a whack of force.
From the floor, Weatherby looks up at her standing over him and laughs. “I know you.” He spits blood at her feet. “Couldn’t kill old Smithy when you had the chance back in Sunnydale. Won’t kill me now.”
Understanding blooms across Faith’s face, and she smiles, a baring of teeth. “Got a news flash for you, pal.” She pulls a knife from her boot. “Mighta been the same car, but it wasn’t me behind the wheel that time.”
Giles has to laugh at the look on the other man’s face - one part confusion, two parts fear.
Weatherby never loses the look as he kicks out at Faith’s knees, toppling her so that she falls to the side, where she scissors up with a sharp flick of her legs. She blocks his next series of punches - solar plexus, face, face - and connects, whipping his head back with one good jab of crunching cartilage and bone. A snap kick to the knee, and Weatherby’s on the ground again before a backhand across the jaw finishes the job. Holding him in place with a knee on his gut, she pauses, knife at the ready.
Faith glances over at Giles, raising an eyebrow and tipping her head towards Weatherby.
And he can picture it. At a nod from him, the knife slicing through the air to plunge into the chest, to gash open the throat. Blood spurting red, so red, over her hand.
‘Monster … perfect assassin.’ Yet he looks at Faith with her hand paused, not taking the kill, and he shoves the First’s voice down easily for the first time.
That’s not who she needs to be.
He answers her with a small shake of his head.
That’s not who he needs to be either.
~~~
Since they stop the spell before its completion, there are no lingering effects on the audience, and many of the demons simply slink away as soon as they’re able to disentangle themselves from the crowded club. Still, the ones who do set off on rampages offer Sunita and the rest of the London Slayers ‘a fair bit of sport, what’ as she says before leaping back into the fight with a happy grin.
It also turns out Robson has a spell-proof, very unpadded cell for Weatherby to pass his days in.
So it’s only two in the morning by the time Giles and Faith stumble across the threshold of his house and into waiting kitchen chairs, each sporting an icepack. It seems decadently early, all things considered. Most near disasters usually keep him out until at least four.
Faith groans and moves the ice to the other side of her knee. “So that guy was one of the Watchers sent after me in Sunnydale?”
“Yes. Although he … well, he was wet-works actually. Strangely enough, it turns out that I’m not the blackest sheep the original Council had.”
“You?” Faith laughs. “You gotta be kidding me. You’re,” she waves her hand up and down, encompassing him, “a little gray maybe, what with you sporting ink and all.”
His hand covers the Mark of Egyon on his arm as the First whispers through his mind, ‘Every time you lie, you are the one who makes evil in this world.’ Giles clears his throat. “Faith … there are things I have to tell you, things I’ve done that -”
Holding up a hand, she interrupts. “Look, I know you ain’t no freaking saint. Hell, who is? But I been around enough to know you’re okay.”
He lets out a breath and smiles. “You’re not so bad yourself.” Taking off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose, he sinks into the chair.
After a bit, Faith asks, “What about the girl, er, thing, er … girl-thing?”
“The Flickenfemme is an old, old spell that allows a body created from various … parts to be animated. It turns out the use of it inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.”
Her forehead creases. “But wasn’t that monster wicked hard to kill and crap?”
“It’s a component of the spell that the creator can invest the creature with one principle ability. The Frankenstein progenitor had strength. This one could manipulate demon thoughts and emotions through song, which it was uniquely able to do by having three sets of vocal cords.”
“Three? Wicked gross!” She rocks back in her chair, balancing it on two legs. “And the femme part? I’ve seen Frankenstein on TV - the thing’s totally a dude.”
Giles takes off his ice pack to probe the back of his head. The swelling’s gone down, and the pain is manageable. He’s had, after all, a fair bit of experience with head trauma. “Yes, well, Shelley may have taken a few liberties, but the spell was only ever developed to create … females, which is why it’s called Flickenfemme - patchwork girl.”
“Don’t tell me - it was made by some guy from way back who couldn’t get laid. How freaking sick.” Faith pauses, then adds, “Kinda like Weatherby, huh? Freaking sicko, that one.”
“Quite.” She’s so very right. Being callous enough to create a Flickenfemme speaks volumes, let alone the subsequent events. Weatherby … well, there’s a real monster for you.
Needing a drink, he says, “Beer?”
“Hell, no! I think it’s time we broke out the hard stuff. Where you been keeping the whisky, Steed?”
He lets out a sigh of relief. “The drinks cabinet in the lounge.” When she starts to rise, he waves her back into her seat and smiles. “You keep icing that knee. I’ll get it.”
~~~
The first weekend of their new partnership, they settle in front of the television in his lounge, and Giles presses play on the remote.
The screen fills with witty banter, with mysteries solved and Emma Peel karate chopping her way through any bad guys not put down by John Steed’s umbrella or Bowler hat.
Giles finds himself laughing, glancing over to see if Faith’s enjoying the show. She’s demolishing a packet of Lamb and Mint crisps, curled on the end of the couch with her feet tucked under her. As the episode proceeds, he catches her grinning every so often.
When the credits roll, she says, “So that’s what you meant when you called us Peel and Steed.”
“Yes.”
“They’re pretty freaking cool, huh?”
“I like to think so.”
She stands, wadding the crisps packet into a ball with the loud crinkle of plastic. “I’m gonna get a beer.”
Once she’s left the room, he sighs. Well, what did he expect? That she’d get what he meant? He pops open the tray of the DVD player, fumbling the case with his other hand.
From behind him, Faith asks, “You got any more of that Avengers stuff?” She’s standing in the doorway, two Boddingtons in hand.
Surprised, he holds up the box. “All fifty-one of the Emma Peel episodes.”
“Fifty-one? Dayumn, they were together for a while.”
He pushes the DVD back in and settles into his end of the couch, accepting a beer. “Yes.” He smiles as the opening theme song plays. “Yes, they were.”