Part 3
Faith had stayed in too many motel rooms during her short life, each one as faceless and uninviting as the next, filled with the ghosts of a thousand other lost souls looking for somewhere to hide.
A part of her liked them. Liked the faceless ghosts, ratty bed sheets and the low hum of the vacancy sign. There were no expectations to live up to, no eyes demanding more than she could give, just a well worn carpet and checkout at eight.
Simple.
And the perfect place for three brunettes running from the past.
“We’re a cliché, you know that, right?” Faith broke the ever present silence that blanketed them.
Fred nodded, picking idly at the label of her half finished beer as she leant her hip against the open door way.
Faith had given up asking questions about what was going on when Fred and Cordelia had returned from the rest room, neither looked like they were interested in playing twenty questions and contrary to popular belief, Faith knew when to keep her mouth shut.
For a while at least.
“So, Wini, what’s your story?” Faith asked as though she didn’t really care if she was given an answer or not.
“I don’t have a story,” the Physicist replied, her gaze fixed resolutely to the dusty DeSoto in the mostly empty parking lot, “and my name’s Fred.”
“Whatever, Fred,” Faith rolled her eyes, “I just want a few answers. Like why the cheerleader’s not her usual high bitch queen self-“
“You know nothing about Cordelia,” Fred silenced the Slayer with an angry hiss.
“Jeeze, sorry,” Faith raised her hands in supplication.
“Don’t talk about her like that, she isn’t…just…just don’t,” the Texan ran out of steam in the argument.
Silence crept back in like a thief and settled uncomfortably between the Physicist and the Slayer.
Nightfall had done little to cool the stifling Arizona heat, Fred could feel long trickles of sweat running down her spine, her thin shirt stuck uncomfortably to her back and her skin felt suffocated with dust and secrets.
The plan had been Texas.
A familiar place to dissect the truth from the lies, home cooked food, the warm comfort of her parent’s affection. But as they’d fled LA in a car that had seen better days, the thought of returning to the home she hadn’t seen in years, to the people that knew her better than she knew herself, terrified Fred.
So the plan had changed to anywhere but LA or Texas.
Anywhere that didn’t know of the falsities they’d been fed, lives that had been shattered, decisions made without consent.
Fred didn’t know what she was doing, if she’d made the correct decision to spirit Cordelia away from LA. She was beginning to have serious misgivings about inviting Faith along for the ride too.
The Slayer was beginning to ask too many questions that Fred didn’t want or know how to answer. Fred knew she should tell Faith what was going on but how could she when she wasn’t even sure herself?
She and Faith weren’t friends, probably never would be, but the Physicist hadn’t known who else to turn to. Not Wes or Gunn because they didn’t know the truth.
And certainly not Angel.
Glancing over her shoulder, Fred checked on the still form curled up on the single bed in their shared room.
“She’s been sleeping a lot,” Faith carefully stated.
“She’s been through a lot,” Fred returned her gaze to the weathered DeSoto.
***
“I don’t get it,” Gunn frowned, ignoring Spike’s snort of derision, “Fred and Cordy hightailing it outta dodge just doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m sure there was a valid reason,” Wesley swirled the amber liquid around in his glass.
“Better bloody be a good one,” the blonde vampire muttered as he lit the cigarette that dangled haphazardly from his mouth, casually ignoring the no smoking signs were littered around them, “that car’s a classic-“
“But I must admit it’s not like Fred to do something so rash without letting one of us know,” the Englishman wondered out loud effectively cutting off yet another of Spike’s rants about his beloved Desoto.
Gunn nodded in agreement, loosening his tie and unbuttoning the collar of his shirt as he did so.
He was finding it difficult to wind down after another day in court and by the amount of whiskey Wesley was consuming, Gunn realized he wasn’t the only one.
The bar was shiny and clean, very different from the atmospheric Irish pubs that they’d frequented in the past. Table after table was filled with weary looking executives, each of them passing the time until they had no other choice but return to their shiny wives and clean houses. The sounds of corporate life buzzed around the three that sat in a not particularly companionable silence. Meetings with accountants were discussed half heartedly, last nights game was intricately dissected, Moby lamented his troubles with God and cell phones beeped for attention.
“And Angel doesn’t think we should go after them?” Gunn turned his attention to the blonde vampire that was fidgeting like a ritalin child.
Spike shrugged with disinterest and wondered why he was wasting his evening with these two idiots for the eighteenth time since he’d crashed their little mope fest.
It was typical of Spike’s luck that the one person he found vaguely interesting in the entire town would end up stealing his car and leaving for destinations unknown without so much of a see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.
Not that he was worried about Fred, because he wasn’t.
Barely knew the girl.
Couldn’t care less.
Just because he had a soul now didn’t mean he gave a crap about Angel and his band of merry men.
Spike told his soul to shut the hell up.
“I’m telling ya, it doesn’t make sense,” Gunn repeated his earlier declaration, shooting Spike a sharp glare before the bleach blonde could question his intelligence again.
“I was speaking with Knox earlier, apparently Fred had been acting odd for most of the week,” Wesley shared the morsel of information he’d been able to garner, “well, odder than usual anyway,” he amended.
“Odd how?” Gunn frowned.
“He didn’t say,” the ex watcher shrugged.
Spike flicked his gaze between the two friends while they sat in a moment of quiet contemplation, each undoubtedly thinking about what would cause Fred’s strange behaviour.
The vampire felt the urge to knock their heads together. He’d had more interesting conversations with Andrew.
Gunn leant forward in his chair, an unasked question written clearly across his face.
“What?” Wesley asked.
“How much time have you spent with Cordy since she woke up?”
“Well….” he paused, thinking, “we’ve been rather busy….”
“Yeah, same here,” Gunn nodded guiltily.
Wesley frowned and studied his drink as though it were the answer to all their problems.
“Jesus, you two are worse than the poof,” Spike rolled his eyes.
“Are you gonna answer that?” Gunn snapped at him roughly.
“Answer what?” Spike narrowed his eyes suspiciously, quickly replaying the conversation in his mind to see if he’d missed a random accusation that may have been thrown his way.
“Your pocket’s ringing,” Wesley gestured vaguely with his drink before swallowing the content in one impressive gulp.
Spike frowned and reached into the deep pocket of his leather duster. He sifted through the contents, grimacing when he came into contact with a sticky piece of candy that may very well have been in there for decades, only understanding where the annoying beeping he’d been hearing for the last ten minutes had been coming from when his fingers wrapped around a cell phone.
He’d forgotten he even owned one.
With a parting glare at the two men, who each looked as amused as the other, Spike stood and stalked towards the entrance of the bar before they could mock him about enhanced vampire hearing.
Once outside, the blonde punched the call button.
“What?” Spike barked roughly, fully expecting to hear the not so dulcet tones of his grandsire checking that he wasn’t causing mayhem.
“Nice phone manner you’ve got there,” an achingly sweet and familiar voice replied, clearly amused.
A smile that few rarely saw lit up the vampire’s face.
“Buffy,” as he said her name the vampire felt the tension drain from his shoulders.
“Hey.”
“You OK?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Still enjoyin’ the corporeal unlife,” Spike scratched his thumb over the scar that ran through his eyebrow, wondering if this was a social or business call, desperately hoping it was social even though those calls were few and far between, “how’s Dawn?”
“Being a pain in my ass, as usual.”
Spike heard a distant yelp of indignation that could only ever come from the youngest Summers and his heart twisted fondly.
“Sounds like niblet,” he said softly.
“Yeah.”
An awkward pause filled the conversation, both blondes still unsure how to talk to the other.
“There was a reason I called,” Buffy said quickly before the conversation died completely.
“Right,” Spike tried to hide the disappointment in his voice.
“The police have been sniffing around looking for Faith again, could you let her know she should be on her guard and not do anything, you know, Faithish?”
“‘Course,” he nodded then realized there was a flaw in that plan, “one problem though, pet.”
“What’s that?”
“Faith ain’t here.”
“Er, yeah she is, she left a few days ago, said something about a friend needing a favour? Did she not turn up?”
Something clicked in the vampire’s brain.
“No, but I have a feeling I know where she is,” Spike sighed.
“Trouble?”
“I expect so.”
“Should I be on my way to LA?”
Spike’s heart screamed yes.
“Naw, we can handle it,” he forced himself to say.
“OK,” Buffy said, sounding unconvinced.
Another pause, a heartbeat of silence.
“Buffy?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you telling me this and not Angel?” Spike asked before he could stop himself.
The blonde slayer’s silence was worse than her venom.
“Listen, forget I-“
“Because I wanted to talk to you,” her quiet admission broke off his hasty back tracking.
Hope bloomed in his chest and an unguarded smile spread across his lips.
“So, has Angel given you an office yet?” Buffy quickly changed the subject, just as Spike knew she would.
Baby steps, he reminded himself.
“He barely tolerates me in the building, luv, doubt I’ll be getting my own view any time ever,” Spike muttered and sat down on the curb.
“Want me to tell him to play nice?”
“Don’t you soddin’ dare!”
Buffy snorted with laughter and Spike wished he could her right now, curled up in her sweats on the sofa, finally having the half normal life she’d always yearned for.
“S’good to hear you laugh,” the words were out of his mouth again before he could stop them.
Spike glared at the stars as though it were their fault.
“S’good to be laughing again,” Buffy agreed.
Change of topic.
Just to be safe.
“So, how’s ole’ one eye doin’? Bet he’s missin’ me somethin’ desperate.”
“Uh huh, about as much as he misses syphilis.”
“Oi now missy, I’ll have you know me and Harris’ve got a bond.”
“Sure you do Spike, sure you do….”
***
When the bathroom door clicked shut, Cordelia stopped pretending to be asleep.
Opening her eyes and rolling on her back, the once Seer for the PTB stared blankly at the water stains that covered the ceiling like a mildew Sistine Chapel.
When she heard the shower begin, indicating that Fred would be occupied for a while, thus unable to watch her with the mix of pity and suspicion that now shadowed the Texan’s gaze, Cordelia swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, wincing at the dull ache of muscles that had gone unused for too many months.
Her stomach clenched angrily at the movement.
Swallowing down the bile that rose in her throat, the brunette stood and made her way across the room, grasping the door frame for a moment when the floor threatened to slip out from under her feet.
Faith tried not to show her surprise when Cordelia sat down in the plastic lawn chair next to hers.
“Feel better?” the Slayer asked casually.
“Do I look better?” Cordelia raised an eyebrow at her.
“You look like shit,” Faith said honestly.
“Coma,” the ex cheerleader shrugged.
“Been there, done that,” Faith sighed and swallowed the last few dregs of her beer.
“Got the frikken T-shirt,” Cordelia muttered and tilted her head to look at the stars.
For all the hours they spent in the night, they’d rarely seen the stars through the smog and lights of Los Angeles.
Tonight they glittered like a thousand pairs of eyes watching over her.
It should have felt comforting.
It didn’t.
“Why are you here?” Cordelia asked Faith bluntly.
“Been wondering that myself,” the Slayer plucked a beer from her dwindling supply and offered it to the woman beside her, surprised when Cordelia accepted it.
They drank in silence beneath a sky that had witnessed their crimes.
***
Angel tried to ignore the petulant ring of his cell phone as it echoed through his apartment.
He closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the bottle of Scotch that sat comfortingly in his left hand.
It rang and rang, a shrill demand that threatened to irritate the vampire enough to pull him out of his misery just to shut it up.
Silence.
Angel sighed with relief as the quiet returned to his gloomy, lifeless apartment.
There was no warmth in this place, no memories of soft laughter, of happy bickering, the soundtrack of a family he’d let slip through his dirty hands.
He’d left the warmth behind him when he’d made a pact with the devil.
Not even the ghosts of the living comforted him here.
He’d thought that this is what he’d wanted, what they’d all needed. A fresh start, a future for Connor, some measure of peace for Cordelia.
He’d been a fool.
“A fucking fool,” Angel muttered and attempted to drink some warmth into this dead body.
Everything was gone, the son he would have died for, the woman he’d never had the chance to love.
Gone, and he’d let them walk away.
Angel dropped the now empty Scotch bottle to the floor beside his bed and rubbed his hand roughly over his face. He felt old, too fucking old for this, more than a century of misery aching in his bones, one after another they left him, left trapped in the shadows while the world felt the real sun on it’s face.
His sun was artificial and hollow, it bled into his tower of metal and lies, lit up the shadows that shouldn’t be seen and he hated it.
Hated it so much that he could taste the bitterness in his mouth, or maybe that was just the alcohol.
Angel didn’t know anymore.
Didn’t care either.
His right hand bunched into a fist, the crunch of paper reminded him of what he was holding. Moving faster than his alcohol addled brain should have allowed him, Angel frantically sat up and switched on his bedside lamp. His big hands fumbled to flatten the creases he’d inflicted on the sole reminder of a life only he remembered.
No, he corrected himself, not the only one that knows anymore.
That thought brought him no solace.
The happy faces that stared back at him from the photograph brought him even less.
His sleeping child in the arms of the woman he loved.
“S’beautiful,” Angel murmured as he traced Cordelia’s smile.
A familiar voice broke through the silence of his self imposed prison, pulling the vampire from his memories. It took him a moment to realize it was his answer phone and Wesley wasn’t actually in his apartment, which meant he missed the beginning of the message.
“think Faith is with them, I had Knox run a trace on all of Fred’s calls over the last few of weeks and there was one to Cleveland a few days before they left town.”
The Englishman paused and Angel knew what he was going to say next before he said it.
“Angel, we think they may be in some kind of trouble. And if they’re not, they probably will be soon. Gunn’s getting in touch with his contacts, it should be easy enough to discover where they are, the DeSoto’s hardly- (‘s a classic!)-Spike, will you shut up!”
“Just get on with it already, Wes,” Angel muttered even though the ex watcher couldn’t hear him.
“We’re going after them, just as soon as we have a location. There’s something going on here Angel, Fred wouldn’t just up and leave with Cordelia for no reason, especially not with Faith.”
Another pause.
“I think you should come too. Call me when you get this message. Oh, it’s Wesley by the way.”
A click and silence reigned once again.
With hands that had lost more than he could hold onto, Angel slipped the wrinkled photograph back into its home inside the bedside table, beneath the books he no longer had the time to read.
Shoulders hunched, the vampire stumbled over to his drinks cabinet and pulled out a full bottle of vodka, determined to drink himself unconscious while his house of card began to crumble.