seldear | AtS fic: "Getting Along"

This is unspeakably late. Especially since the due date was pushed back once before. I'm extremely sorry for the tardiness! It's been a mad couple of weeks.

TITLE: Getting Along
AUTHOR: SelDear
SUMMARY: Faith sings in an LA cemetary.
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: The final episode of Angel.
FICATHON: Faithficathon, due 3rd July
WRITTEN FOR:

shadowlongknife
REQUESTS: Lorne (non-romantic), Angel (up to the writer, but I'd like to see some lovin'...), Faith sings something for Lorne, Faith gets to drive one of Angel's garage fulla cars. No Buffy-bashing. No Illyria, dammit. Also, no Eve.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I haven't seen any of Angel S5, although I know a few spoilers. I have tried to fit it in with what I know of the final episode, but obviously since I haven't seen it, there may be a gap or two that I have left unplugged. I apologise most profusely for any errors in the fic - it should fit neatly into canon.

Getting Along

The bright LA sun battered down on her shoulders as she stood by the cold grey markers of the dead.

It felt weird to be in a graveyard by daylight. Weird and somehow wrong.

But the people she'd come to meet had lived in the light and fought in the light, and she felt she should greet them in the light. Or something. It made sense in her own mind, it was only when she tried to explain it...

Angel had accepted that she wanted to see them now, at least. That was something.

"He looks real bad without you guys there to look after him," she told the four graves, feeling something choke in her throat. "I think... I think he's losing it."

No answer came back from the ground.

Faith flushed. She felt stupid talking to dead people. But there wasn't anyone else to talk to. Angel was definitely not Mr. Talkative right now, Spike wasn't exactly Mr. Sensitive at the best of times, and the chick-who-looked-like-Fred-but-wasn't was...weird. And that was being polite.

"You guys fought well, you know," she said quietly. "Angel said so, and I trust he's telling the truth and not jacking it up just to make you guys look good. I'm pretty sure he misses you, even if he doesn't say it." She looked down at the silent grass, then up and out to the dirty LA sky. "It...it kinda makes me wish I'd hung around with you guys instead of heading out to Sunnyhell."

Still nothing from the silent earth, and Faith felt a bubble of bitter amusement well up in her. "You know," she said, "This is all the wrong way around." Inside her, a furious anger was growing, the temper that wanted to lash out at something, anything or anyone available. She controlled the urge to punch something, but let the rage flow through her, a welling bitterness at the Powers that were reputedly in charge of all this stuff. "It should have been me!" Her words rang out to the sky, a broken challenge. Then, softer, "It should have been me..."

Faith was the Slayer. A long life wasn't on the books anyway, but she'd survived through more things than she cared to remember. She'd fought and been beaten and gotten up and kicked and screamed and punched and fought again. She'd found people and lost them, and found new people and lost them, too.

And all that had happened for her in a space of five years.

"It's not fair," she whined at the listening dead - assuming that they were listening to her and not off in heaven or wherever. "I'm the one with the superpowers. I'm the one that's expendable. One girl dies another one gets chosen - that's the deal, right? But everyone else around me is dying." She snorted. "Except for Angel who's already dead."

One booted toe scuffed at the grass on the edge of one of the graves. "Y'know, Wes, I was on my way back to LA, all ready to ask if you were prepared to play Mr. Watcher-man again. Kick your ass and all, run you ragged, do the heavy lifting, and all that - but nicely this time. And then I arrive and find you've copped out on me." She bit her lip and felt the slight ache of tears, but glared down at the grass until the prickle went away. Faith didn't cry. "Takes all the fun out of it."

Yeah, she felt like an idiot talking to a bunch of people who were dead and couldn't hear her. And if they could, then why would they want to? These guys were fighters for the Light - they were probably living it up in whatever version of heaven they'd gone to.

Maybe that was why it was them and not her. They'd done their good work, and their mighty deeds would be sung by the poets forevermore. Or some such shit. Anyway, Faith was still down here, paying for her sins. Only the good die young.

"I guess it's kinda sad that I didn't even know you guys all that well and I'm missing you. Says something about my life, y'know?"

It said something about her state of mind that she was asking questions of plain old dead people.

"Look, you're probably living it up wherever you guys are, and I hope it's all good for you. But I hope you come back once in a while to check on Angel. Because the big guy just isn't doing so well without you. And I don't know what the hell to do - I mean, my idea of coping with grief is to go out and kill something. Not exactly a helpful coping mechanism. And I think your Fred might have left some ramble about, because this is so not my kind of conversation."

"Oh, I don't know," said a voice behind her. "You seem to be doing quite well - as long as you watch where you're pointing that thing."

She'd whirled up from the tombstone, slipping her stake from her pocket and laying it up against the chest of the incongruously green demon who stood behind her. "You oughta know better than to sneak up on a Slayer," she told him as she put the stake away.

"Princess, you were so busy talking to them, you wouldn't have noticed if the sun went out." He indicated the headstone beside the one she'd been perched on. "Mind if I join you?"

She was almost tempted to tell him, 'Yeah, I mind.' Something in his expression - such as it was - stopped her. Granted, she didn't know Lorne all that well, but the demon guy seemed...subdued. Not the bright and dramatic personality he'd seemed to be in the aftermath of getting Angel back.

"Take your pick."

The silence settled between them, tense - or so it seemed to Faith. She hadn't seen him back at the firm, and Angel hadn't mentioned him. Which seemed odd, now that she thought about it.

"We're not talking any more," Lorne said.

She glared at him, "Anyone ever told you...?"

"That it's intrusive, invasive and very disconcerting? Plenty of times." He indicated the quartet of headstones with a curt gesture that still didn't hide the sadness. "I think they all said it at some stage."

Faith wanted to ask what happened, but something told her that Lorne wasn't exactly in a forthcoming mood right now. Not that she was either. She'd stepped off the plane in LA, hoping to leave New York and all its memories behind...

Tears stung her eyes. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't...

A hand touched her shoulder, green-skinned and red-nailed, but gentle for all its jarring brightness. "Oh, kitten," Lorne said, edging her over so he had room to sit on the tombstone and put his arm around her shoulders. "You've had it hard in the last few weeks, haven't you?"

Something dropped onto her hand, cold and wet, and another one plopped onto her leather pants, splatting wetly against the black hide.

It was ridiculous.

In the middle of LA's major cemetary, amidst the new-mown peace of bright green lawn, Faith the Vampire Slayer wept into the shoulder of a green-skinned, red-horned, white-suited, mind-reading demon like the world had ended around her.

In some ways, it had.

Without Robin, New York was a cold and empty city. LA had seemed so much more hospitable from far away - until the plane touched down and she arrived at Wolfram and Hart to discover that everyone she knew was dead.

Welcome back, Faith.

She had nowhere to go and no-one to turn to. She'd asked about the others, Angel had handed her the keys to one of his cars and said, "LA cemetary, Lincoln Drive, row G, one-fifty-six to one-sixty." Before shutting the door on her and leaving her staring at the keys in her hand and rage growing in her heart. I fly across the continent to get here and you shut the door in my face? Thanks a fucking bunch, GQ!

Someone was stroking her hair back from her face, tender as a mother was supposed to be. "It's not easy for you, Princess."

In spite of the tears drying on her face, Faith snorted. "Will it ever be?"

He looked at her, "I wouldn't know."

Her brows drew together in a frown, "But aren't you...?"

"I'm not a mind-reader, Princess, I'm anagogic." he said. "I read auras, and the your aura becomes open to me when you sing."

"Oh." Faith stared down at the graves before them, the tips of her boots just touching Gunn's plot. Hell, her hands and face were still wet with tears, she might as well go for broke.

And something told her Lorne already knew the whole attitude thing was a cover.

"I'm here without you, baby,
But you're still on my lonely mind,
I dream about you, baby, and I think about you all the time.
I'm here without you, baby,
But you're still with me in my dreams.
And tonight, boy, tonight - it's only you and me..."

Robin used to have a jones for power ballads, too. At least they'd been modern ones.

Sitting in the plane, she'd stuck the headphones on, and had come across the song while trying to find the hardcore stations. And it felt right, like slaying, like laughing with Robin, like coming back to Angel in LA.

Faith fell silent. She'd been pretty bad, she could hear it herself. No sense of music, bad rhythm...

Lorne didn't say anything.

"Guess it must have been pretty bad," she said, her voice cracking a bit. She was at the end of her tether right now. She didn't know where to go, she didn't know what to do...

Another glance at Lorne showed him, staring out across the cemetary at something that wasn't there. "I think..." He paused for a moment, then looked at her, quite obviously troubled, "I think you'd better go back to the firm."

Faith stared at him. Of all the possible things he might have said, she hadn't expected this one. "That's it?"

The red eyes looked at her, "You're still in the fight, Faith. You know that. You'll be in the fight until the moment you die. The Powers call their Champions and it's rare that they let them go. And that includes Mr. Dark and Broody - who I'm still not going to talk to, before you even ask."

She had been about to ask. His words stopped her. The way he said it...he meant it. Really meant it.

"Why should I go back if you don't?"

Lorne tilted his head at her, a little scornfully. "Princess, there's no bad blood between you for what's happened. And, much as it chafes me to say it, the Big Broody needs ya."

"Didn't seem much like it," she muttered, remembering the brusqueness with which she was greeted and shoved out the door.

"His human friends are all gone, you know." Lorne said. "You're his last link to humanity."

"Oh, and that's going to be so great for him," Faith muttered, staring down at the grass around her heels. "His last link to humanity is someone who spent three years in the pen for murder one. Add to that the 'not likely to see twenty-fifth birthday' deal and the vampire's doing just peachy-keen."

The air around her shoulders was chilly as Lorne dropped his arm. "Look, sweetheart," and there was a slight edge in his voice as he regarded her, "I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but you've got a couple of options available to you, and I don't know which one you want to take. But I can say with absolute assurance that you came here to see Angel, and if you don't follow through on that, then what was the point of coming here anyway?"

She didn't have anywhere else to go, in the end.

"Guess you're not coming?"

The shake of the head was definite. "No way. Angel and I are over. Dead. Finished. Dusted." There wasn't much room for argument there, Faith thought, not a little sadly. She'd burned enough bridges in her life to recognise that this one was nothing more than crumbling ash.

"So how do I get in contact with you?" Boldness came easily to her, like a bee to a flower on a hot summer's day. She was used to being bold.

And he liked it. The smile he gave her was approving as he flipped a card out of his pocket. "Here." The card was laid in her hands, glitzy and sparkly and brash, very much like Lorne. "But no Broody-Guy," he said in warning.

She let him go, watching the way he sauntered across the serene lawn of the graveyard, absurdly green and white and red in this place of peaceful dead.

The ground beneath her feet was a little soft, sinking down as she stood up. She'd spent too much time in cemetaries lately. Too much time grieving. Too much time brooding.

It wasn't healthy - either for the living or the dead.

"I'm off," she announced to the graves at last. "I guess... I guess I'm going back to the firm. See if Angel needs some help now you lot are gone..." She paused, lingering at the foot of Wesley's grave. "Thanks for the freedom, Wes. You have no idea..." The words wouldn't come from her so she gave up. Hopefully he understood in his no-longer-so-uptight English way.

It wasn't much of a benediction, but it would have to do. She didn't have much else left to give. She never had.

"Sleep well, guys."

The drive back to the law firm was frustrating. Accustomed to the jerky somnolence of the New York subway, punctuated by the ramblings and rantings of assorted loonies, Faith was used to letting her mind wander elsewhere while someone else did the driving. Not an option in LA.

But the car was lovely. A 1969 Ford Mustang convertible, slut-scarlet with creamy leather upholstery and bright shiny chrome edges. Under normal circumstances, Faith would have been more likely to join a nunnery than be allowed anywhere near a car of this vintage and style.

Angel had definitely been living it up as the boss of the Law Firm of Ultimate Evil.

Of course, he didn't seem to be living it up quite so much as he sat in the middle of his darkness, staring into nothing.

She dumped the keys in his lap. "Snap out of it, Angel."

"Go away." It was more of a growl than a voicing.

"Sorry, no can do," she snapped back. "I got nowhere else to go, and you look like you got no-one else to be Mr. Grumpy around so I guess I'm the 'it' girl." Faith felt pretty ridiculous standing in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips, challenging the man - well, vampire - who had his head in his hands, staring down at the floor.

"Faith, just go away."

"Angel, I got nowhere to go to," she told him, angry and tired of being angry.

"New York City, maybe?"

Her hands fisted by her sides. "Robin's dead," she said, controlling her voice in spite of her emotion. Angel had taught her to channel the rage and emotion into something that wouldn't land her in prison; Robin had shown her how that worked, the practical, sensible, everyday workings of life and the crap it threw at you.

God, she missed him.

"So am I," Angel muttered in response.

Faith gritted her teeth and kicked him across the jaw in her anger, sending him sprawling across the couch.

The demon face looked up at her, snarling, and she automatically fell into a fighting crouch. Something in her screamed that this was Angel, that he wouldn't hurt her; but the instincts rose in her, faster than she could control. What they were was as strong as who they were; the Slayer in Faith feared and hated the vampire, just as the demon in Angel feared and hated the Slayer.

But even as she reached for her stake, he morphed back to human form, and the anger seemed to drain from his body, leaving him limp on the floor.

"What do you want, Faith?" He demanded. The tiredness in his voice echoed her own weariness. Angel was tired of the fight - tired of the cost of the fight. Faith could understand that. She'd been tired, once, too.

She was tired now.

Angel had taught her to get back into the fight. He'd been the one to show her how to haul herself out of the gutter and leap into the fray. And now she would do the same for him. Somehow.

"I want you to get up and have something to eat," she said, quietly, looking down on him where she stood, thinking how weird it was to be playing the mom to his lost child. "I want you to live as though their deaths meant something."

"And what if they didn't?"

"You know and I know that their lives meant something - and so their deaths did, too." Anger gave her voice bite, and her own pain choked her throat. "And if we want..." She swallowed hard, thinking of Robin, of his kindness, and the way he'd challenged her, watched out for her, watched over her. "If we want that to mean something then we pick ourselves up and go on."

Something dark glittered in his eyes as he looked over at her. "I'm guessing I don't get Slayer for dinner?"

Faith snorted, "What do you think?"

He hauled himself up, looking decidedly un-GQ-like. "That's a no, then?"

As he got himself a drink, Faith looked around the place. Not exactly the dusty clutter of Robin's Mom's Watcher's pad, but then, Angel seemed more bohemian elegance than old library.

Then again, there was a small library over in the corner...

Faith wandered over and began checking out the books.

"Gotten literary?" Angel asked from behind her.

"No," she returned quietly. "But...Gerald had a lot of them."

"Gerald?"

"Nikki Wood's Watcher."

"Ah." She could feel him, standing behind her, her senses tingling with the consciousness of a vampire close-by. She'd almost gotten used to not automatically striking out at Spike while he was in SunnyD, although there'd been moments...

Now she'd have to get used to it all over again, it seemed.

Guess I've decided I'm staying, she thought to herself.

There was a kind of relief in the thought.

She was no Buffy Summers, saviour of the world. She wasn't Angel, saving people from themselves. She was just Faith. Doing what she'd been chosen to do, and trying to get along the best she could.

"So are you staying?" Angel asked after a moment of silence.

Faith turned, met his gaze evenly. "Guess so."

Getting along was always easier with someone beside you.

* fin *