Scribblings by Lizbeth

Will Post the Last Part to Fic Tonight

2008-07-24T12:36:28Z

I fell asleep on the couch last night fairly early in the evening.

*winces*

So for those of you waiting for the last part to Last Train Leaving Wonderland, I apologize.

I'll post it tonight.

Sorry for the delay.

FIC: Last Train Leaving Wonderland (Part 3/4)

2008-07-23T03:52:51Z

Title: Last Train Leaving Wonderland
Author: Lizbeth Marcs
Summary: Xander’s got a plan, but life keeps interfering.
Genre: Future fic, dark fic
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Xander/Faith

No, your eyes don't deceive. It grew from 3 to 4 parts. Due to LJ posting limits, I couldn't fit the very final section of this story. Still, you won't mind waiting until tomorrow to read the very, very end, right? (*puppy eyes*)

“You’re never gonna guess the name of the Slayer who’s comin’ to meet us.”

“First tell me how it went down.”

“That?” Faith was chipper as she stood spread-eagled over his outstretched legs with her hands on her hips. “Smooth, quick, and clean, just like the doctor ordered. Stuck as soon as she hung up from G after we gave him the all clear to send up our little courier. Never knew what hit her.”

“Which car did you hide her in?” Xander asked.

“Zoe’s, which was a real shitbox I might add. Since I was sittin’ next to her in her car, it wasn’t all that hard to shove her over the top of the front seat into the back,” Faith said. “Used the handy blanket folded up on the back seat to cover her ass. I was so smooth, no one even knew I was there.”

“Great work.” Xander looked up at Faith’s triumphant, beaming face. Everything was going according to plan, and yet…

Yet…

He felt off-balance. It wasn’t that he was worried about the plan. In fact, it was the only thing he felt actually confident about. It was…

It was…

He didn’t know what it was. That was the problem.

Faith dropped to her knees and straddled his thighs. As she leaned forward, Xander could see that the pupils of her eyes were dilated and that there was a slight tremor along the surface of her skin. Well, that was to be expected, what with the Slayer blood running through her veins. What stunned him was that somehow Faith was managing to ride the situation, instead of letting it ride her.

She grinned at him in an off-kilter way. “And you still haven’t answered my riddle.”

“What riddle?”

“The perfect name of the Slayer who’s gonna deliver us the jewel.” Faith leaned forward until their noses were practically touching.

“I’m going to take a wild stab at it and say Alice, what with us being down the street from Wonderland and all,” Xander dryly remarked.

“Wrong!” Faith triumphantly announced as she settled back into the position where she was straddled across his thighs. “It’s Bunny.”

“Bunny,” Xander deadpanned. “Who the hell is names their daughter Bunny?”

As Faith bounced in place, she looked like she was ready to jump out of her skin. “I think it’s a nickname or somethin’, not that it matters all that much because the fact a Slayer named Bunny is running to Wonderland with a jewel singing that she’s late, she’s late, she’s late for a very important date just rocks my socks,” she cackled.

“A Slayer named Bunny strikes fear into the hearts of exactly no one,” Xander grumbled.

“But you gotta admit, perfect for our situation and totally unexpected, which means it’s wrapped in several shades of awesome.” Faith started scratching at her forearm, as if she could somehow get to the skin through her padded denim coat and the shirt underneath.

“Rocks your socks? Several shades of awesome? You’re totally high, you know that right?” Xander asked with amusement.

“Well what the fuck do you expect? You shouldda warned me about the hit.” Faith paused a moment in her scratching and twitching. “Unless you didn’t know because you never…” she began.

“Three that the Council didn’t even know existed that I just happened to stumble across while I was traveling solo. Otherwise, I was nothing less than a perfect Council-certified Watcher to all the Slayers under my care and all the new girls the Council told me to go recruit,” Xander answered.

Faith looked impressed. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Wow.” Faith stretched her arms above her head as she smiled beatifically at the seawall. “That taste was somethin’, that’s for sure. Don’t know how you resisted for a year with all that Slayer pussy constantly under your nose.”

“The gold rules of survival in action, Faith,” Xander simply answered.

“Yeah, well, now I get why you’re so hardcore about them gold rules.” Faith looked at him as if she were trying to force her brain into new shapes so she could figure him out. “That’s the kinda taste you could get addicted to.”

Xander uncomfortably shrugged. “I didn’t mean for you to be taken by surprise. I thought sure I warned you about the aftereffects.”

Faith exaggeratedly shook her head no.

Xander winced. He was very sure that he did warn her at least several times as they made their way up the coast to Boston. Even so, it was his bad that he didn’t remind Faith about it before she went to meet Zoe.

Wait a second. Was he blaming himself for Faith’s faulty memory?

He took a mental pause as he looked at the thought again.

He was blaming himself for not reminding her. What’s more, he really believed that he screwed up by not doing so.

The unsettled feeling once more curled through his mind as he tried to wrestle with the whiplash nature of how he kept reacting to Faith all night. It wasn’t caring. It wasn’t concerned. It sure as hell wasn’t the beginning of anything resembling love. Whatever it was, it was emotional and he couldn’t deny it. The problem was that every word he knew that came even close to describing his situation didn’t really get to the truth.

“Hey, yo!” Faith waved a hand in front of his eye. “I thought you’d be jumping up and down with joy. Plan’s going off without a hitch.”

“I am happy,” Xander quickly said. “I’m just being…cautious. I don’t want to celebrate too soon.”

Faith sat back on his thighs and tilted her head. “Nah, that’s not it. It’s that same look you had before when you asked me ‘why Wonderland’.”

Xander frowned at Faith without really seeing her. He didn’t want to talk about it, and yet he kind of did.

“How much time do we have before Bunny meets us?” Xander asked.

“The pavilion over there in about 30 minutes.” Faith jerked her head up toward the well-lit, street-level platform to their right. “Well, it’s more like 20 minutes now. So spill. Are you seein’ that we might have a problem with the plan? ’Cause if you do, let me know now so I’m prepared.”

“No, no, no.” Xander shook his head. “The plan’s fine. It’s just that I was just thinking about Jesse while you were off dealing with Zoe.”

Faith went very still. “Jesse, hunh? Is that an old girlfriend or something?”

Xander gave her what-the-hell face. “Jesse was a guy.”

Bouncy, grinning Faith returned. “No shit. With a name like Jesse, he must’ve been a tough motherfucker.”

Xander snorted. “Not so much. Although he got really good at being a punching bag.”

“With name like Jesse, I’m not surprised.”

“You know what? Forget it.” Xander moved to push her off his legs.

“Sorry. Sorry,” Faith apologized as she slapped his hands away. “It’s just you being so serious can make a gal nervous. You’re always as serious as a fucking heart attack, but this is like 100 times more than normal.”

Xander fell to frowning at her again. He really shouldn’t have said anything at all. It made him too vulnerable.

“Hey, c’mon,” Faith said. “We got some time to kill. Ain’t like we can set the scene right this second.”

Well, it was too late now. Faith had a habit of not letting things drop whenever something captured her attention. “Jesse was a friend I had in high school.”

“Hunh. Don’t remember him from the SunnyD,” Faith said.

“He made top of the food chain before you ever came to town,” Xander simply said. “Guy never held a stake in his hand, before or after he died.”

“So, what happened to him?”

“I staked him.”

Faith went still as she watched him with an expression of sympathy on her face.

“It was an accident.” Xander uncomfortably looked toward the lit pavilion where their Bunny was due to show, mostly because he couldn’t bring himself to look at Faith. “But I still did the dusty deed.”

“Shit. That’s rough.” Faith moved off his thighs and plopped down next to him on the sand with her back against the seawall.

“To be honest I wasn’t thinking about him so much,” Xander said, “but something he said after he sprouted his own set of fangs.”

“Was it right after he got turned?” Faith asked “’Cause if it was, you know newbies have shit for brains. They’ll say and do anything to go out there and start their first slaughter. Hell, you know that from experience, right?”

“I don’t know if he said this right after he became a vampire or if it was after he had the first feed,” Xander admitted.

“So, what’d he say?”

Xander frowned at the ocean in thought. “That he was connected.”

“Connected? Connected to what?”

“Everything.”

Faith screwed up her face, as if the answer didn’t make sense. “Everything?”

Xander shrugged. “He said that he was connected to everything. Said he could even hear the little worms burrowing through the ground.”

“Worms, hunh?” Faith tilted her head. “That’s a pretty fucked up thing to tout as an actual benefit if you ask me. His sales pitch really sucked.”

Xander exploded into giggles. “The scary thing is that I think he really believed that hearing the worms was the coolest thing ever.”

Faith joined him in laughing. “Newbies, man. I’m telling you. Shit. For. Brains. More evidence that I’m right.”

Xander’s laughter suddenly died. “Do you feel connected?”

Faith made a sour face. “Connected? In what way?”

“That big ol’ imprecise everything, worms included.”

Faith leaned against his shoulder as she thought. “I think your bud was overselling. Or talking out his ass.”

“I’m not so sure,” Xander said. “He seemed so, I dunno, happy. Like he was riding a high. I think he really believed it.”

Faith snorted. “Okay, so maybe he was talking to you after he made his first kill or some shit like that. Don’t mean that he wasn’t talking out of his ass.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Xander quietly agreed.

Faith sat up and gently elbowed him in the ribs. “I think I know the problem. Not that it’s a problem, actually. Just that you think it’s a problem.”

“Problem?”

Faith waved over her head at the top of the seawall. “You don’t hate them.”

“Hate who?” Xander asked.

“Them. All of them.” Faith looked at him. Although she was still clearly riding her high, her eyes had that clear, considering look in them that signaled she had actually thought this out. “Not saying you even like them, just that you don’t hate them.”

“Faith, why the hell would I go hatin’ on anybody?” Xander paused and thought about it. “Okay, that’s not to say that I don’t have a list of people whose throats I’d rip out on sight if I crossed paths with them, but general non-directed hate? That’s way too much effort.”

“See? See? That’s what I’m talking about.” Faith pointed at him. “You don’t hate them. You don’t bother even trying. You find them useful. Sure, they’re good for food, or a fuck, or as tools to get shit done. But there’s no malice in it. No hate. I honestly think — and correct me if I’m wrong, but I know I’m not — that if some mook with a plan came along to wipe ’em all out so the demons could inherit the earth, you’d side with them to stop the idiot.”

Xander frowned. “Unh, Faith? That’s a no-brainer. I don’t know if you noticed, but without them, we’d be in deep shit. Unless you like the idea of feeding off animals for the next century or three.”

Faith cheekily grinned at him. “You did it.”

“Because I wanted to keep my skin intact, thanks. It wasn’t that I actually enjoyed it,” Xander sniffed. “Okay, maybe I enjoyed killing hyenas, but I have a really good reason for that.”

Faith leaned back against the wall with a smile that could almost be described as fond. “Exactly.”

“Hunh?”

“You never do nothing without a reason,” Faith said. “Okay, sure, it might be a shitty reason, like you losing your temper back in Providence, but it’s still a reason.”

Xander opened his mouth, but Faith put two fingers up to his lips. “Let me finish,” she said.

Xander nodded his permission.

“I ain’t saying that you’ve got no instincts. I mean shit. The way we are? Instinct’s built in.” Faith stretched like a cat. “But you? You don’t hunt or kill for fun. You only do it because you gotta eat, or because it serves some plan of yours. It’s like our stupid horny teenagers.” Here Faith waved vaguely down the beach. “If you were 100% sure they’d be gone by the time Bunny got here? You wouldn’t have done shit. You would’ve ignored them. Why? ’Cause shits and giggles ain’t a good enough reason for you.”

“I can have fun,” Xander protested.

“Not sayin’ you don’t have fun when you’re on the hunt,” Faith’s toothy smile took on a lascivious character, “and I ain’t sayin’ you don’t know how to have fun with your food. I’m just sayin’ you have fun with it, but you don’t do it for fun. See the diff?”

“I…guess,” Xander uncertainly agreed.

“It’s like your gold rules, the ones you keep beating into my head,” Faith continued. “Rule 1: Never leave a trail of bodies that can lead people right to your front door. Rule 2: Never get involved in some dumb-ass scheme to bring on an apocalypse. And my personal favorite, Rule 3: If you break Rules 1 or 2, be prepared to fight a fuckload of pissed-off Slayers because you just got their attention.”

“Those rules are important,” Xander protested. “They keep you—”

“In one piece,” Faith interrupted. “And you know what? You’re right.”

Xander blinked stupidly at her. Faith made it clear that she hated the gold rules. She called them stupid, made fun of them, and even rolled her eyes at them. More than once he ended up smacking her around because she got so disrespectful about it.

Faith grinned at him like she had read his mind. “I mean, take our 35 brothers and sisters all stored nice and neat in plastic baggies and stuffed in your duffle bag. Shit, let’s throw in all the times we helped out some Council house while makin’ our way up the coast over the past month while we’re at it. How’d they end up dust, hunh? These geniuses had to know the world had changed. No more Chosen One, no more Terrible Two. It’s now the Slayer Sisterhood, complete with union. It’s insane. Here’s the world just crawling with the slimy bitches, and these idiots are still partying like it’s April 2003.”

“So what are you saying? I’m an evolutionary leap?” Xander sarcastically asked.

“Evolutionary leap,” Faith said as if she were trying out the words. “Hey, I like that. We’re an evolutionary leap.”

“Or how about I came up with those rules because I know how the system works,” Xander said. “It’s called using your brain.”

Faith throatily chuckled. “So what’s stopping everyone else from doing the same, hunh? They’re still walking around with their dicks out just begging to be staked. Shit, you know. We staked every one of those 35 assholes when they got too frisky with us because we crossed their turf.”

“I’m sure there are others who know how to keep a low profile,” Xander mumbled.

“Not too many,” Faith sing-songed.

Xander wasn’t sure if Faith was putting him on. “I thought you hated being careful.”

“Won’t lie. At first I thought you were being a wuss, but that was before my spectacular fuck-up back in Atlantic City. Shit, I left bodies everywhere,” Faith said.

“Tell me about it,” Xander grumbled.

“I mean, sure, you beat my ass bloody, dragged me back to my apartment, and wrapped me in so many chains that I thought you were gonna entomb me in metal, which pissed me the hell off,” Faith said. “But after? After was beautiful. You go back, find a vamp nest in Harrah’s that you can blame for the whole mess, paint some of those stylized snakes on the wall so the Council would think the Cult of the Oblique Jewel had a branch in town, and then go boo-hooing to the Council-approved Watchers and Slayers about how I got jumped when I came across them making with the carnage. But the best part? They believed you. They go in with stakes out, and we go in with them, and dust every single one of those sad sacks. And did anyone have a clue about us? No, sir. That’s pretty much when I knew you were right. You’d hid it so perfect for a fucking year that no one even thought to question things when you started yanking their chains. Shit, I sure as hell didn’t when I jokingly invited you into my apartment. Far’s I knew at the time you were still a frigging boy scout.”

Xander’s eye narrowed suspiciously. “So why’d you keep dissing the rules if you were on board before we even left Atlantic City?”

Faith leaned in and flicked her tongue across his lips. “Sometimes I’m a bad girl who just wants to be spanked.”

Xander laughed. “You did it because you wanted an angry fuck?”

Faith began rubbing the inside of his thigh. “A brutal, angry fuck, thank you. And what d’you expect? A girl’s got her needs.”

Xander grabbed her wrist to stop her before things got too far. “Fair enough,” he said with amusement. “But now that the secret’s out…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll find something else to piss you off,” Faith interrupted with a self-satisfied smirk. “I’ve been making a list.”

“I can’t wait,” Xander happily said. He leaned forward to give her a hard, deep kiss.

When he broke away, Faith was happily licking her lips. “Think we got time to go another round?” she hopefully asked.

“I wish,” Xander said as he stood up. “But the last thing we need is for Bunny to see us having fun when we should be suffering the suffering of the just.”

“Fair enough,” Faith easily agreed as she hopped to her feet. “And, hey, you feeling better? In general?”

Xander knew he looked surprised at the question. Faith never showed any particular concern about his well-being before.

“Yeah.” Xander could feel the smile creep across his face. “Yeah, I think I am. Hunh. You and me. We’re an evolutionary leap forward.”

“Yeah, well, if you don’t let it swell your head, I won’t let it swell my head neither,” Faith good-naturedly complained. “So, let’s get to it. Me first. And remember. Slayer. Don’t break any important shit.”

“I won’t,” Xander promised. “And don’t forget. When it’s my turn, leave the right side of my face alone. I need to see. Oh, and human here. So breaking a rib or two is okay, but nothing else.”

Faith snapped a nod. “Got it.”

“Then let’s do it,” Xander said. The words were barely out of his mouth before he spun around in a round-house kick and caught Faith square in the stomach.

******

“Is that her, do you think?”

“Shush, Harris. You’re gonna give our asses away.”

“Hullo? Mr. Harris? Ms. Lehane?” the Slayer — Xander assumed it was Bunny — leaned out over the pavilion’s railing and peered into the darkness.

“Look straight down,” Faith ordered through her split lips.

Bunny did as she was ordered. The Slayer eyesight was clearly working for her, because she let out a gasp. “Oh my God!”

“Will you keep your fucking voice down?” Faith asked in a loud whisper. “Harris here is hamburger and I don’t feel so hot myself. The last thing I need is another tangle with those assholes.”

Bunny quickly looked over her shoulder, moved two feet to the right, and vaulted the railing. Despite the steep jump, she stumbled only a little bit when she landed in the sand. “What happened?” she asked as soon as she got her bearings.

“We got jumped. What the fuck do you think happened?” Faith snapped.

“Where’s Zoe?” Bunny asked.

“Dead,” Xander answered in a shaky voice.

“Dead?” Bunny asked.

“What the hell are you? An echo?” Faith impatiently asked. “Harris here spotted those snake-fuckers and ran his ass down to Wonderland to warn us. Problem is half of them were chasing out asses in the opposite direction, so we ended up colliding right on the damn boulevard.”

“My fault,” Xander whispered as he wiped blood from his chin. “This is my fault. I missed something somewhere. There’s a base I didn’t cover.”

“Will you shut the hell up?” Faith snapped at him. “One, it ain’t your damn fault. Sometimes plans just fall to shit and you know it. Two, if you insist of feeling guilty, feel it after we pull our asses out of the fire.”

“Are they still here, do you think?” Bunny nervously asked as she scanned the beach.

“Bet on it,” Faith said.

“How many?” Xander asked in a raw voice.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” Faith threatened.

“How many what?” Bunny asked.

Xander allowed himself a painful cough. “How many of your people are dead?”

Faith whipped around and pointed at Bunny. “Don’t answer that. Don’t you dare fucking answer that. He’s been calculating the number of dead in that trail of bodies following us from Atlantic City to here since we started huddling on the beach like two horny teenagers.”

Sadly, Bunny decided to follow Faith’s orders. “You two barely look like you can stand, let alone run. How are we going to get to my car if they’re everywhere?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Faith said. “But right now, I need to talk to G.”

“They’re really busy right now,” Bunny timorously said.

Faith got right in the girl’s face. “Fuck that noise. I want to talk to the Big Man. Now.”

“Actually, I feel stupid about not thinking about this before, but with everything…actually I should use the cell first because I have an idea.” Bunny began fumbling around in her pockets for her cell phone. “I guess your cells got trashed, hunh?”

“If we had still had our damn cell phones, we would’ve called and told you to turn your ass around and head back to the barn,” Faith raged at her as she snatched the cell out of the Slayer’s hand. “Give us a little credit for brains.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say you didn’t. Have brains I mean,” Bunny quickly apologized. “But I really think you should let me—”

Xander almost felt sorry for the little Slayer. Between the one-two punch of hearing about Zoe’s untimely demise and Faith’s faux rage, the poor girl didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.

“Faith, can you please stopping taking it out on Bunny?” Xander interrupted. “It’s not her fault that we just overwhelmed her with the suck.”

Faith flipped open the cell and began scrolling through the contact list. “G’s still at the Council house, yes?”

“Yes. But—” Bunny began.

“I’m not in the fucking mood, girlie,” Faith snap.

Bunny, realizing that there was no moving Faith, instead turned and walked closer to Xander. “You look really awful,” she sympathetically said.

“The amount of obvious in that statement is difficult to calculate,” Faith snarled. “Is it possible to get more than 100%?”

Bunny hunched her shoulders and shuffled in the sand.

“So, was it worth it?” Xander bitterly asked.

“Hunh?” Bunny startled.

“Don’t start Harris. Do. Not. Start,” Faith threatened.

Xander painfully pulled himself to his feet. It wasn’t much of an acting feat. He and Faith made sure to go the extra mile to make it look real. The bad news was the whole exercise gave him what he was sure was an obvious chubby. If Bunny noticed, he’d be in for a world of shit.

“I want to know,” Xander said in a firm voice. “I’ve been dodging these jewel-worshipping, snake armband-wearing lunatics since the Congo. I’ve seen more people get killed than I care to count because of this supposedly awesome jewel. I want to know if it was worth it.”

“I…don’t know how to answer that,” Bunny hesitantly said.

“That doesn’t answer the question.” Xander made a show of standing upright, before slumping back against the cement wall.

“Harris? You and I both know that Bunny here ain’t got no answer for that,” Faith said. “Besides, I already know that you don’t think it was worth it.”

“Well, I want to see it,” Xander stubbornly insisted. “I want to see this jewel that got so many people killed.”

Bunny looked to Faith for guidance.

“Whatever.” Faith waved a dismissive hand at him. “Go on and look, not that it’s gonna change your mind.”

Bunny hesitated.

“Just give him the frigging jewel already,” Faith snapped. “And then get your ass over here so the two of us can conference in with G.”

“Shouldn’t Mr. Harris also be in on the call?” Bunny asked.

The question brought Faith up short. She looked to Xander for an answer.

“As has been pointed out, I can barely breathe, let alone walk,” Xander began. “I’m going to stay leaning against this wall right here.”

“And again, I am not leaving your sorry ass behind,” Faith angrily said in a way that more than hinted the two of them had been arguing about just this subject most of the night.

Xander ignored her outburst. “So whatever plan you guys hammer out, you’re the ones that have got to execute it.” He slowly sat back down onto the sand using the cement wall as support so he wouldn’t sit down suspiciously quick. “Whatever happens next, I’m basically along for the ride.”

Bunny wavered a moment. “I think you should know that I don’t have it,” she said. “I mean, I don’t have the jewel on me.”

Both Xander and Faith were stunned into silence.

“What?” Xander and Faith shouted unison.

Bunny quailed. “Lemme explain. See, I barely got out of Boston, and that’s with me driving like a maniac down Storrow and playing duck-and-weave with the traffic down Route 1. Then, I had to keep backtracking to make sure I wasn’t followed once I got here. That’s why I was so late.”

“That doesn’t explain shit,” Faith growled. “And I better be getting a real good explanation after beatin’ we just took waiting on your sorry ass.”

Xander hauled himself back to his feet, much more quickly this time. He should’ve known. He should’ve known. The second he heard Giles’s voice on the phone, he should’ve called the plan on account of Scooby interference, grabbed Faith, and run like hell for the estate-turned-bolt hole he set up in Mozambique.

“You don’t understand,” Bunny desperately tried to explain. “The cultists are everywhere. There were so many reinforcements pouring into the city to search for the jewel that none of us could avoid them. We can’t even begin to figure out where they came from, because there definitely wasn’t as many around the jewel.”

Xander pinched the bridge of his swollen nose as he thought. His sources had most definitely led him astray on troop strength numbers. While he’d love to backtrack and strip the hide off the person who lied to him, he couldn’t. One, multiple sources gave him numbers that were all in the same ballpark. Two, everyone he had questioned about the jewel became a meal after they no longer served his purpose.

Clearly the cult was far more organized and had far more secret reserves than he could have reasonably guessed based on the information he had.

“Since we’re the ones who can’t be tracked, how the fuck does the Council plan on getting the jewel out of B-town?” Faith demanded.

“Buffy’s going to help,” Bunny said.

Xander dropped his hand from his face as he openly stared at Bunny. “Buffy is on her way to St. Petersburg.”

“Actually, she’s already there. Or was before the Council’s Russian contingent got their witches to teleport her here,” Bunny explained. “Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you since I got here, neither of you would let me finish.”

Faith and Xander exchanged looks. Now Buffy was in Boston. They were well and truly fucked. They had to get the hell out of Massachusetts while the getting was good.

“Why the hell didn’t Giles tell Faith that Buffy was playing cavalry when he talked to her earlier?” Xander asked as he slowly advanced on Bunny. He made sure to make it look like he was stumbling a little as he did so.

Faith saw what he was doing and quietly began moving closer to Bunny from the opposite side.

“He didn’t get the idea until after he talked to Faith and Zoe,” Bunny said. “He figured that since everyone knew that Buffy was headed for St. Petersburg, the Council’s leak wouldn’t be able to warn the bad guys. So, anyway, that’s why the emergency teleport to Boston.”

“That’s smart,” Faith agreed.

“Anyway, Mr. Giles gave Buffy the jewel and it was off to the races,” Bunny said. “In fact, she’s—”

Bunny never got to finish that sentence.

******

“Why the fuck are you still dragging that duffle bag around? Dump it.”

“It’s got our fake documentation, bank accounts, and a whole lot of cold, hard cash.”

“On second thought, I love the fact you’re still holding the bag,” Faith said as she and Xander raced down Revere Beach Boulevard to the Wonderland station parking lot.

Xander could feel the Slayer blood working its way through his system. Already he could feel his ribs knitting together with an electric buzz, and the deep bruises in his muscles fade. His skin seemed to tingle all over as the cuts and scrapes left behind by Faith’s lovely hands started to heal over. To the human eye, he’d still look like holy hell, but much of the damage was more cosmetic than anything else.

However, the normal, buzzing high that usually came with a Slayer meal was curiously absent. Maybe it was because he only got half-a-Slayer, or maybe it was because of his injuries. Either way, he didn’t much care. His head was still mostly clear.

“Still mystified why you bothered dragging Bunny’s dead ass down near the dead teens and ripped open 5 bags of vamp dust and spread all around them,” Faith complained. Luckily, the giggling high that had accompanied her feeding from Zoe had disappeared and she was focused. Well, she was focused enough to complain about their situation, at least.

“To set the scene,” Xander shortly explained.

“Fuck setting the scene. We need to skedaddle,” Faith argued.

“Look, going by the fact we so easily got the drop on Bunny, it’s a pretty good bet that the Council doesn’t know about us,” Xander began.

“Yet.”

“Okay, yet. They probably don’t know about us yet. And we still have that no-tracking spell on us, which the Council can’t lift unless one of their witches convinces us to step into a circle so they can reverse it,” Xander skidded to stop next to Faith when they were across the street from the trash-strewn Wonderland station parking lot. “We’ve got a good shot of getting out of this with at least our hides intact.”

“But why bother with the fake massacre?” Faith demanded.

Xander grabbed Faith’s arm and yanked her close. “Because the longer we can keep the Council guessing about what really happened, the more distance we can put between us and them before they finally figure out the truth. If they start with the assumption that we’ve been taken captive—”

“They’ll waste a lot of time looking in all the wrong places,” Faith finished for him. “Got it.”

“Okay. Now pick a car.” Xander jerked his head to indicate the parking lot across the street. “Any car. I know we’ve got limited options this time of night, but I’ll go with your expertise.”

Faith looked like she was carefully considering her options. Clearly the Zipcar was out, since Giles knew they were driving one. Zoe’s beater of a car was out, since its make and model was already known by the local Council house. As for Bunny’s car, they didn’t even know where it was parked.

Unfortunately, she didn’t look any happier with any of the other choices.

Faith suddenly checked her watch. “Since we took the time to change into clothes that weren’t bloody, I say we go with the T.”

“The T,” Xander deadpanned. “Please tell me you’re not seriously suggesting we make our getaway using mass transport.”

“Stealing a car attracts attention sooner or later,” Faith thoughtfully said. “When the Council comes up here in a day or two to investigate where our missing asses got to, a report of a stolen car’ll be a big ol’ red arrow pointing at us. If we’re gonna keep the Council guessing, I say we go with a nice, anonymous, people-mover that’s cash-only for fares.”

Xander blinked at Faith as he took in her advice. Again she had surprised him with her seat-of-the-pants thinking. Clearly he had more of a goldmine on his hands than he originally thought.

“Before I say yes, how difficult would it be to get to the airport doing it your way?” Xadner asked.

“Prepare to celebrate, ’cause this is the line that’ll get us there.” Faith happily grinned. “It’s just 6 or 7 stops from here and maybe a 20 minute ride. Probably less this time of night.”

Xander grabbed her by her shoulders and passionately kissed her. “You’re a genius!”

She swatted his arm. “About time you figured it out.”

“So, when’s the next train?” Xander asked.

Faith checked her watch again. “If I had to guess, the last train out will be here in a little over 15. And just so you know, I’m playin’ that estimate as being closer than I really think it is, just to be safe.”

“Okay. All we need is an excuse to explain why we’ve been beaten,” Xander said.

“Bar fight,” Faith automatically answered.

“Nah. That’ll make someone want to call the cops if they hear that.” Xander paused as he thought. “Domestic.”

Faith made a face. “Shit. I gotta be the damsel, don’t I?”

“Hey, I’ll be the damsel if you want,” Xander said with a shrug. “But there’s a risk that a guy my size isn’t going to inspire as much sympathy.”

“Fine!” Faith threw up her hands. “You’re rescuing me from my bastard, dope-dealing husband.”

“We’ll work it. Let’s go,” Xander ordered as he scooted across the boulevard.

As they landed in the parking lot flooded with its dirty, yellow lighting, Faith stopped him with a grip on his arm. “Before we jump the turnstiles, I’m thinking we need to follow the original plan here, too.”

Something in Xander’s gut told him it would be a bad idea. It was probably better if they just make their way to the platform and leave their 3 bodies tucked in the cars. “I don’t know,” he began.

“Look, if they find those two mooks from the Shirpwreck Lounge in the trunk of our Zipcar, and a dead Slayer in the backseat of her car covered with a blanket, they’re definitely going to figure out that we ain’t victims,” Faith said.

“Can we pull this off in 10 minutes?” Xander asked.

“Super-speed, super-strength…what do you think?” Faith asked.

Even though some instinct screamed at him to nix the idea, he had to admit that Faith made too much sense. “Okay, fine. You arrange our Slayer like she was nailed mid-dusting between her car and ours so she won’t be immediately obvious to anyone walking by. I’ll check to make sure that the parking attendant is gone for the night.”

Faith took off for Zoe’s beater while Xander raced to the tiny wooden shack at the entrance of the parking lot. Once he reached it, he slowed down to walk and casually passed by the glass enclosure in the front. Even though it looked dark and empty, Xander stopped and peered into the interior to be sure. After straining his neck this way and that so he’d see the compartment from every angle, he relaxed. The attendant had left for the night.

Once he knew the coast was clear, Xander unzipped his duffle and retrieved one of the bags of vampire dust and one of the stakes. He opened the bag, and dipped the tip of the stake in the dust before shaking out the Ziploc so the dust would be carried away on the wind. He then repeated the process with two more bags. When he was done, he dropped the stake to the ground and shoved the empty Ziplocs back into his duffle. Any Council investigator would look at the planted physical evidence and conclude that 3 vampires had been staked in the immediate vicinity.

Xander brushed off his hands with a chuckle. This trick had served him more times than he could count in Africa. He had laid down so many false evidence trails so often over the past year that it had become almost second nature.

As Xander crossed the parking lot to get to Faith, who was waiting by the Zipcar’s open trunk, he’d occasionally stop and shake out a Ziploc bag of vampire dust or two to make it look like that Zoe was killed in battle that had raged all over the parking lot. Along the way, he dropped two more dust-infused stakes to the ground. These he kicked in randomly different directions.

“You know, it’s a wonder our girl wasn’t killed sooner,” Faith said as he approached. She toed the top of the dead Slayer’s head as she spoke.

“Why’s that?”

“Back door on the other side was broken,” Faith answered.

Xander froze as a wave of paranoia hit him. “How recently?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Faith asked.

Xander glanced at the well-lit station.

“Will you stop worrying?” Faith asked with irritation. “Ain’t no one watching us at all. I saw one big beefy chick in a T uniform, but she’s moved off to the far side of the station. No way she can see what we’re doing from over there.”

“But the broken lock on the car…” Xander began.

“A shit car like this? The stunner is that it’s only one lock that’s broken,” Faith insisted. “So, how many vamps did our girl get?”

“I’m thinking 6 before she went down,” as Xander reached into the duffle bag.

“Guess that makes her super Slayer,” Faith joked.

“No, it’s because I have 6 bags left and I want to dump them all,” Xander replied.

“Fair enough. Where do you want me to dump the trash from our Shipwreck Lounge meals?” Faith asked as she peered down into the trunk. “Ain’t like we can wrap them in this plastic tarp and carry them like they’re in an oversized doggy bag.”

Xander didn’t bother looking up as he contaminated a stake with the leftover vampire dust. “Find two corners where it looks like a vampire could hang out for a quiet lurk while watching the parking lot. Drop one in each spot. Cover one with the tarp, and the other one with any old trash you can find.”

Faith looked around. “How hidden do you want the bodies? From just casual passers-by? Or no finding them until they begin to smell?”

“The more hidden they are, the better I like it,” Xander answered.

“On it,” Faith said. She lifted one of the bodies out of the trunk, flung it over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and sped off for a shadowed area to the lee of the station.

As Faith strategically placed the bodies, Xander rearranged Zoe’s body so she’d be harder to spot from anyone casually walking by, dropped the dust-contaminated stake near the Zoe’s body, and finished dumping the last of the dust. He then took his elbow and smashed in the passenger side door of the dead Slayer’s car. He glanced around the parking lot and considered doing the same to one of the random cars that still dotted the lot, but since he didn’t know if they were alarmed, he decided not to risk it.

“All set,” Faith announced as she slammed the Zipcar’s trunk shut.

“That was fast.”

“Hey, we’re on a schedule here,” Faith said. She checked her watch. “Five minutes and counting.”

“Let’s roll,” Xander said. “And Faith, remember…”

“I know, I know. Don’t kill anyone unless you gotta because the last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves.” Faith paused to give him an affectionate smack across his shoulder blade. “Spoilsport.”

2<< ( 3 ) >>4

FIC: Last Train Leaving Wonderland (Part 2/4)

2008-07-22T03:10:30Z

Title: Last Train Leaving Wonderland
Author: Lizbeth Marcs
Summary: Xander’s got a plan, but life keeps interfering.
Genre: Future fic, dark fic
Rating: NC-17

Note: Just so you know, this is the part with the smut. It's also the part with the mention of child rape (completely unrelated to the smut). You've been hereby warned for potential triggers.

“Man, oh, man. That was great. I really needed that.”

“Shit, yeah. It was a fucking honor and privilege to be part of something so beautiful.”

Xander threw a companionable arm around Faith’s shoulders as they walked across the sand back to their original position. “I can’t believe it. We nailed them mid-thrust.”

“I was so sure they were stoned before we got close enough to get whiff,” Faith whooped. “And all they got on ’em is a six-pack? With none of the bottles opened? There’s horny, and then there’s stupid teen-aged horny.”

“Always delicious,” Xander agreed. “And speaking of horny, not to mention popping off after not even 5-minutes’ worth of thrust, I barely sink my hunk-a-hunk of brunin’ love into you, as the King would say, and you’re baying at the sky.”

“Hey, what the fuck did you expect? With the accent on fuuuuck.” Faith elbowed Xander in the ribs hard enough to cause him to stumble.

They reached the seawall and their now-forgotten plate of Kelly’s deliciousness. Xander dropped the duffle back onto the sand. Although it had been awkward bringing it along, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving it behind. There was always a chance that someone would look down, see an unattended bag, and make off with it while they were busy.

Faith, meanwhile, was still exalting over the successful conclusion of the side-plan and the righteous screwing that followed. “You know a perfect payoff like that gets my panties good and soaked.” Faith flung out her arms and spun around in a circle as she laughed. “I saw you standing there, and I couldn’t resist.”

“Yeah, but you’re not the one with a raging case of blue balls,” Xander good-naturedly complained.

“Really.” Faith sauntered up to him in walk that still managed to be sultry despite the fact she was moving across uneven sand.

“Really.” Xander leaned back against the seawall as he watched her approach with an appreciative expression. “It’s very painful.”

Faith pressed up against him. “Hmmmm, guess I’m gonna hafta take care of that.”

“I'm sure you'll think of something,” Xander encouraged her with a low voice.

Faith’s grin matched the predatory gleam in her eyes as she reached for his fly. “Now don’t forget my name. It’s ‘Oh, God,’ in case you forget.”

She freed his cock with a deft reach-in-and-pull-out action as she slid down the length of his body. Xander’s head thunked back against the cement wall. The logical part of his brain, the part that had kept him kicking around Africa with his skin intact for 11 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days after fate threw him a U-turn, and the northeastern United States for 1 month and 4 days after hooking up with Faith, told him that it would’ve been smarter to keep his mouth shut and suffer in silence. He couldn’t afford to be distracted in this way right this second.

When Faith’s mouth closed around his cock, all thoughts of caution flew right out of his head.

He got himself more comfortable, and looked down to watch Faith’s head bobbing up and down along his length. Much as he wanted to add to the friction by moving his hips to bring himself off a little faster, he held off and instead let her do all the work. A leisurely blowjob seemed to him to be just the thing he needed to take the edge off.

Xander placed a hand on Faith’s head to encourage her as he made low, moaning noises.

Faith, taking the hint, added a little teeth-scrapping action as she took him deeper and deeper into her mouth and down her throat.

Xander moaned his approval with an “Oooooh, Goooood.”

The low chuckle Faith managed to give in response while expertly sucking him off sent a bolt of electricity up his spine.

Just when he was getting into it, his cell phone rang.

Fuck careful, just this once.

“Don’t you dare stop,” he said in a strangled voice as he shakily patted down the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

Faith slowed down the pace of her bobbing and backed off on the deep throat action, all the better to have him really beg for the big finish after he was done with this call Xander supposed. He pulled out the cell and checked the number of the incoming call on the screen. He groaned, this time not with pleasure.

“It’s the…it’s the Council house…in the city,” he managed to get out.

Faith released him from her mouth with a plop.

That’s when Xander decided to really, really fuck careful. “Keep going,” he ordered Faith.

This earned him a feral grin from Faith and she went back to work.

As he flipped open his cell, he cleared his throat. “Yes?” he answered shortly.

Faith began licking a circle around the head of his penis as she stared up at him with amused eyes.

“Xander? Are you all right? You sound rather harried.”

Xander stood bolt upright. “Giles?” he asked with shock.

Faith immediately stopped what she was doing and stared up at him in dumb surprise.

Giles chuckled. “I’m not entirely sure from the tone of your voice that you’re pleased I’m here.”

Xander’s mind raced. “Here? As in Boston here?”

Giles was immediately on alert. “Xander? What’s wrong?”

“I’m actually relieved and ecstatic to hear your voice. Shocked, but still relieved and ecstatic,” Xander answered. “You have no idea what kind of night we’ve had.”

“I was about to tell you the same thing,” Giles said. The trepidation in his voice couldn’t have been clearer. “I had to be teleported over here so I could help deal with the emergency.”

Xander groaned as he envisioned his perfect plan falling to pieces. He should’ve known. Him. Of all people. He should’ve fucking known. “Emergency? What emergency?”

Faith was on her feet in a flash. She leaned in close, probably so she could capture snippets of whatever Giles was going to say with her super-sensitive hearing. Xander re-arranged his position so Faith could more easily listen in on Giles’s half of the conversation.

“It appears that your distraction failed,” Giles said. “When the Boston contingent descended on the safe house in Watertown, all of the vampire guards were still in place around the magic users and the jewel.”

Xander resisted the urge to tuck his rapidly softening cock back into his pants and zip up his fly. Dealing with Giles was far too important to get distracted by the trivial. “That’s impossible. Faith and I have been playing tag with a bunch of their minions all night.”

“Bloody hell. Are you sure?” Giles asked.

“They’re wearing the armband with that stylized snake on it, so, yeah, I’m very, very sure,” Xander answered.

“Where are you now?” Giles asked. “We attempted a tracking spell on the off-chance that your protection had failed, but we got nothing for our trouble. In one sense, it’s good news. In the other…well, I suppose it means that in many ways you and Faith are left without a safety net.”

Xander felt all the tension release from his shoulders. Whatever else had gone wrong, the spell that shielded them from tracking spells that had been cast on Faith and himself after the clusterfuck that was Providence — on Giles’s insistence that it was for their own protection, no less — still held. As long as they had that, they still had their escape hatch.

“We managed to get them to chase us all the way into Harvard Square,” Xander answered, deftly leading Giles back on plan. True it was his plan and not the Council’s, but Giles didn’t know that.

“How on earth did you get them to chase you so far afield?” Giles sounded startled.

“Guess they still remember us from the raid we pulled on some of their boys in Atlantic City,” Xander confidently lied.

Faith grinned at him as she mouthed, “Naughty, naughty.”

“Ah, yes. That tricky business with Harrah’s Casino,” Giles said.

“Anyway, we managed to pull them away with, believe it or not, a car chase that stuck to the speed limit and had very little running of the red lights or driving the wrong way up one-way streets as a bonus feature. Guess they don’t want to deal with a phalanx of pissed-off cops stretching across several towns any more than we do. We’ve ditched the car. Right now Faith is a half-block away trying to hotwire another one, just in case someone reported our rental driving erratically and called our license plate in to the police.”

Faith mouthed the words “Brattle Street” at him.

“Just to let you know, we left the rental in some parking lot off Brattle Street in Cambridge. At least, that’s the street name Faith told me. Couldn’t exactly tell you where though, since me not so much with being the local and the whole part where we were running for our lives,” Xander added.

“Sod the rental, Xander,” Giles said with irritation. “Are you and Faith hurt?”

Xander gave Faith the thumb’s up sign. “Aside from the fact that my heart’s pounding, my palms are sweating, my stomach is permanently taking up residence in my throat, and the neck strain from constantly looking over my shoulder since the sun went down, I’m fine. As for Faith, she’s having a blast. It’s a hell of a welcome home party for her.”

“What’s your situation?” Giles was all business now.

“I think we managed to shake them for the time being, but it’s hard to tell.” Xander liked the layer of uncertainty he added to his tone. “There’s a lot of people out on the streets, which, duh, that’s why Faith thought this was the perfect place to keep them off-balance while we play tag with them. The problem is that even if our shadows decided to keep the armbands instead of ditching them to throw us off, we might not spot them before they’re on top of us.”

Giles breath on the other end of the line was shaky. “It appears your refuge is a double-edged sword.”

“And how,” Xander agreed. “Look, not to get all whiny high-school style, but do you have any idea how much longer Faith and I have to play pop-go-the-weasel with these guys? Because I have to tell you, I don’t like our chances if they catch up to us. They looked pretty pissed.”

“The good news is that we have the Oblique Jewel in our hands,” Giles began. “As soon as Faith is done, ahem, ‘borrowing’ your chosen mode of transportation you may feel free to slip away unnoticed. Simply tell us where to deliver the jewel so you can safely smuggle it out of the city.”

Xander felt a low nervous flutter in his stomach. Giles was leaving too much unsaid, starting with the real reason why he was here. “What are you going to do?”

“What I came to do,” Giles mysteriously answered.

“Which explains exactly nothing.” Xander didn’t bother to hide the tone of complaint.

“There’s been a slight change in plans. It’s readily apparent that we have a leak somewhere in our organization,” Giles said.

It took everything Xander had not to laugh out loud with relief. He knew damn well that there was no leak. It’s just that Faith and he had plans of their own, part of which involved them not doing their part to make the local Slayers’ jobs easier. It was all about keeping the Council house off-balance because it was dealing with more pissed off cultists out for blood than they expected once the jewel was stolen from its place of honor. Still, there must’ve been more vampire guards on the jewel than even Xander’s intelligence had indicated if they yanked Giles himself across the Atlantic on an emergency teleport.

“Xander?” Giles asked with worry in his voice. “Are you still there?”

“Sorry. Too busy processing. That is not news I really loved hearing,” Xander quickly answered.

“It seems the cult has been one step ahead of us since you made contact with Faith in Atlantic City. And heaven knows the less said about the mess they caused when they caught up with the pair of you in Providence the better,” Giles said. “Your news further suggests that they may have significantly enhanced the protective contingent around the Oblique Jewel in preparation for an attack that they couldn’t possibly know was coming.”

“Don’t tell me that. Please don’t tell me that.” Xander threw a touch of begging in his voice. “We’re royally boned if that’s even remotely true.”

“Not necessarily,” Giles soothed. “Jane and her Watchers are planning an ambush in an abandoned warehouse on the waterfront in East Boston. I will, of course, be the bait.”

The news of Giles’s untimely arrival was getting better and better. “Bait?” Xander asked.

“Yes. I’m going to be casting a containment spell, ostensibly to prevent the jewel from being touched by human hands,” Giles explained in a low, furtive voice. “We’re hoping it will draw all the cultists in the greater Boston area, as well as the jewel’s Praetorian Guard, to our spot. Needless to say, every active Slayer and Watcher in the city will be waiting to greet them when they arrive.”

Beautiful. Simply beautiful. Even though he had been preparing for this night for a year, events had managed to top his admittedly high hopes.

“I hope it works,” Xander said when he was sure he’d be able to keep the happiness out of his voice.

Xander paused a beat as he debated with himself. Even though he knew Buffy, Willow, and Dawn were all tied up thanks to those false prophecies he planted in the Council’s database under Andrew’s user name, Giles would think it was weird if he didn’t at least mention the old gang. Still, there was always the risk that bringing them up would give Giles the bright idea to teleport any one of them — or worse, all three of them — to Boston to help with Giles’s crisis.

It wasn’t exactly an idle concern, either. Hell, he never in a million years expected Giles to make a surprise guest appearance, and yet here he was.

“Xander? Is everything all right?” Giles asked.

Xander silently cursed. He hesitated just a little bit too long. “Sorry. I thought I saw a suspicious shadow. Turned out to be nothing. Just some hipster in Army surplus,” Xander said. “I was going to ask, though. Why you? Where the hell is Willow? Or Buffy for that matter? Heck, how about Dawn? She’s been known to cast a spell or two in her day.”

“Unfortunately, Willow and Dawn are still embroiled in that business in Hong Kong. Although the rumors about Lord Ashmiran were false, as it turns out, he was hiding a certain amount of black magical activity from the Council. He was…displeased by their investigations into his affairs. As for Buffy, she is en route to St. Petersburg to help the Council house there thwart a prophecy about an ascension,” Giles said.

Xander grinned at Faith, who looked as relieved as he felt. “When it rains, it pours.”

“Indeed. And given the fact that we have no notion who our leak might be, I had no idea who was still trustworthy within our organization. I had to come myself to deal with this business,” Giles said.

“Yeah, well, I so owe you a beer when this over. I owe you a keg of beer.” Xander hoped he wasn’t piling it on too thick.

Giles chuckled. “I’ll collect once we’re safely in London and basking in a job well done. American bitters are beastly.”

“Not to mention actually chilled.” Xander dramatically paused. “Hold on. Faith’s heading back here and she’s signaling me to make myself less seen.”

Xander brought the cell phone down and covered the mouth piece.

“Stick with original plan,” he whispered in her ear before handing the cell phone off to her. “And remember, you think he’s in London.”

“G? No shit? Harris twittered in my ear that you were on the other end of the line,” Faith said. “And what’s with the call from London? The Council accountants are gonna have a stroke when they get a load of Harris’s expense report.”

Xander leaned in so he could pick up Giles’s half of the conversation.

“You’re here? As in Boston here?” Faith cheekily grinned at Xander as she angled herself so both of them could both more easily share the phone.

“I suppose Xander forgot to mention that.” Giles’s voice was soft as it floated out of the phone’s earpiece.

“He didn’t get a chance to tell me before I snatched this sucker out of his hand,” Faith said.

“Yes, well, there’s been a change in plans,” Giles began.

Even though Xander wasn’t doing anything more than just listening, Faith said, “Harris is shaking his head ‘no’ at me, which I guess means he’ll fill me in about your deal later.”

“In the interests of time, that might be best,” Giles agreed.

“Anyways, I’ve hotwired us a Zipcar,” Faith said.

“A what?” Giles asked.

As Faith quickly explained what one was, Xander nodded in satisfaction. Getting his hands on a Zipcar card really had been a stroke of luck. Since the real owner was no longer among the living, he felt pretty confident about using the stolen account to their advantage by using the card to borrow a car from one of the Harvard Square parking spots for a few days.

“Anyways, as soon as we spot them sons of bitches, we’re ready to lead ’em on another chase,” Faith finished.

Xander startled. He couldn’t believe it. Faith really had been listening to him about the importance of being careful and paying attention to the details. She remembered that she wasn’t supposed to know that Giles had told them it was safe for them to go underground.

“Actually, some good news there. You and Xander may lose your shadows,” Giles said.

“Shit. Okay. The Zipcar can still work,” Faith said as she winked at Xander.

“You sound…rather disappointed,” Giles stuttered.

“Nah. I’m good. It’s just I picked a car with a big-ass corporate logo on the doors to make it easy for these losers to follow us,” Faith said.

“Perhaps you should choose another, less conspicuous vehicle.” Giles sounded nervous.

“Don’t want to take a chance hanging around longer than I need to,” Faith said. “It’ll be fine. I mean, who’s stupid enough to steal a Zipcar? Especially when you’re trying to avoid callin’ attention to yourself. It’ll be like camouflage in reverse.”

“Be careful.” Giles paused. “And Faith, we still need a rendezvous point where we can hand the Oblique Jewel off to you and Xander so it’ll be obscured by your protective spell.”

“Hang on. Let me think.” Faith smiled as she tapped her finger against her lips 10 times. “Okay, got it. I seem to remember hearing something about a baby Slayer on the North Shore somewhere. High school age and a local. You know who I’m talking about, right?”

“Let me check.” There was a muffled sound that lasted for less than a minute. “You must be referring to Zoe, of course. I’ve been informed she lives in Swampscott.”

Xander resisted the urge to yell, “Score!”

Faith flashed him the thumb’s up sign as her grin got wider. “Perfect.”

“You’re not planning to show up on her doorstep, are you?” Giles sounded slightly alarmed.

“What? And take a chance of leading these mooks to her front door? I’m crazy, but I’m not about to put everything she holds dear in deep shit.” Faith managed to sound affronted. “Just tell me that she’s got a license to drive, and I may have the perfect place where we can meet.”

There were more muffled sounds from Giles’s end before he got back on the phone. “Jane informs me that she not only has her driver’s license, but her own runabout.”

Xander serenely nodded. So far, so good. His snooping through the Council’s records using Andrew’s username and password had yielded him information that was right on the money.

“G, I could kiss you.” Faith could barely contain her glee. “Okay, here’s what you do. You ring her up and give her all the info about our contact. Way I figure it she’s been kept so far out of this that no one will be watching her. Once you’re done giving her the 411, send her ass over to Revere so she can pass the intel onto us.”

“Revere?” Giles asked. “Where on earth—”

“City just down the road from her hometown,” Faith interrupted. “Bonus, Revere’s something like 30 or 45 minutes north of Boston, depending on traffic. It’s a far enough away that the drooling gorillas won’t think to travel that kind of distance up Route 1 to look for us, but close enough that we can get there with no problem.”

“I must say, so far this does sound ideal.” Giles’s relief practically floated out of the phone and gave Faith a loving pat on the head. “Anywhere in particular?”

“Tell her to head for Wonderland station,” Faith answered.

“Wonderland?” Giles sounded somewhat taken aback.

“Yeah. As in Alice in Wonderland. Don’t worry. Our girl should know where it is the second you drop the name. We’ll leave the Zipcar in beachside parking lot, so she should be able to spot it easy enough,” Faith said.

“Beach?” Giles asked.

“Like I said, don’t sweat it. The girl’ll know what you’re talking about even if you don’t,” Faith rapidly said.

A wave of inspiration swept over Xander. He motioned to Faith that he wanted to get back on the phone with Giles.

Faith held up one finger to signal that she wasn’t done spitting out her directions. “Tell her that as soon as she parks her car in that same lot, she’s to call my cell.”

“Where are you and Xander going to be?” Giles asked.

“Staying the hell out of sight just in case,” Faith said. “There’s a million dark bars down on the boulevard within easy walking distance. I figure we’ll tuck ourselves in a corner and blend in with the local flora and fauna. As soon as I get the call, one of us’ll jog up the street to meet her. Bonus, we should be able to tell you whether it’s all clear for the jewel to make the trip, or if we’ll have to change locations again because the fang-face set turned out to be a whole lot smarter than I thought.”

“I must say, your cloak and dagger skills have sharply improved.” Giles sounded like he was blinking in confusion.

“Hey, 3 years in Atlantic City ducking human organized crime while fighting non-human organized crime will do that for ya.” Faith gave Xander a broad wink. “Seat-of-the-pants planning has become my stock in trade. Ask any of the Council boys and gals in Jersey.”

Giles actually chuckled. “Reports of your Atlantic City activities have quite a following in London. One wag suggested that we paint a patina of fiction over the business and sell books to raise money for the Slayer Emergency Support Fund.”

“Just thank me in the dedication, and I’ll call it square,” Faith magnanimously said. “Before you hang up, Harris is waving his hands. Guess he wants to talk to you.”

“Put him on.”

Faith quickly handed him the phone, licked her lips, and dropped to her knees.

Xander was taken by complete surprise. “Faith, what?”

Faith slurped his half-soft cock into her mouth as an answer.

“Oh. Oh!” Xander exclaimed.

“What is it?” asked Giles’s worried voice.

“N-n-nothing,” Xander stuttered as Faith gently used her tongue and teeth to tease him back into full hardness. “She’s…she’s checking to make sure that…y’know…no one’s giving us the h-h-hairy eyeball.”

“Your voice indicates otherwise. You sound rather jumpy, in fact,” Giles said.

He really, really needed to get Faith to stop. Except she was doing that thing with her tongue and the tip of his penis that always drove him blind with want-take-have.

Xander bit his lip and forced his voice into something resembling steady. “That’s because I am. I feel like I’ve been standing in one place too long for comfort.”

Faith slid her mouth back down along his length with painful slowness.

“But before you go, I just wanted to say…” Xander coughed to prevent a groan from escaping his mouth. “I’m…I’m glad you’re here. Watching…y’know…watching my back. If Buffy and Will…Willow were here…it’d be…it’d be like…y’know…” Xander bit down on his bottom lip as Faith began to hum ‘Yankee Doodle’ around his cock. “Old times,” he finished in rush when he was sure he wouldn’t be moaning in Giles’s ear.

“Xander, we’ll muddle through. I promise you.” Giles’s voice was a mix of intensity, worry, and affection. “We’ve been in far worse scrapes. Lord knows you know that.”

Xander was too busy biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood to immediately answer. Unfortunately, all that did was make the Big O that much closer.

“Xander?” Giles asked.

“Yeah. I know. Oh, God. I know.” Xander’s voice wavered.

Faith suddenly pulled back and stuffed a fist in her mouth. Her shoulders shook with unvoiced laughter as tears rolled down her cheeks.

“It’s just that I’ll feel better hearing that when me and Faith are safe in London,” Xander said in a relieved rush. “In the meantime, I’ll be worrying about what else can go wrong before we land at Heathrow.”

“Between the trap at my end and Faith’s quick thinking, I truly believe that a positive outcome is in sight.” Giles sounded reassuring.

“Knock wood,” Xander solemnly said. An evil notion struck him and he gestured at Faith to indicate that he wanted her to resume her previous position. “And Giles, I know I’ve said this about a million times already, but knowing you’re here somehow makes this not as bad. Y’know?”

There was a long pause at the other end as Faith once more slurped down Xander’s raging boner.

“That means quite a lot to hear you say that,” Giles softly said.

“Look…” Xander licked his lips. “We’ve got to go. Before we’re…y’know…spotted by the bad guys.”

“Understandable. And Xander, good luck,” Giles warmly said.

“Same to you,” Xander said in a rush. He quickly snapped the cell phone shut before Giles could hear that long-suppressed moan escape his mouth and dropped it on the sand.

Faith paused in her work to grin up at him.

“Bitch,” he affectionately said as he placed a hand on her head.

Faith was still smiling as she slid his cock back into her mouth.

Xander leaned his head back against the seawall and grinned at the night sky. Oh, the heartbreak that would ensue. Giles was going to be haunted in his dreams by the voice of one nervous, one very human Xander Harris wibbling affectionately in his ear about old times and how glad he was that Giles teleported across the Atlantic to help him escape a fate worse than death.

The very thought of Giles waking up in a cold sweat on a nightly basis for the rest of his life believing that had had somehow brutally failed to deliver that happy ending was almost a bigger turn-on than Faith’s deep throat action now in progress.

Screw the leisurely blowjob. This called for something bigger and better.

Xander grabbed the top of Faith’s head with both hands and brutally fucked her mouth until he came with a strangled yell.

******

“Finally.”

“Finally what?”

“You actually look relaxed,” Faith said with a lazy smile.

“Mmmmmm, I think I had help there.”

Faith rolled over onto her side so she could give him a slow, deep kiss.

When she broke away, Xander answered her lazy smile with one of his own. He had to admit it. There was nothing better than tasting himself on her tongue. “My compliments to the artiste,” he said in a fake French accent.

“And don’t you forget it,” Faith agreed as she rolled over onto her back so she could join Xander in staring up at the stars.

Another plane passed overhead, but Xander couldn’t be fussed to even make a nasty comment about it.

Once the roar had died down enough so he could be heard, Xander said, “I just want to tell you that you were brilliant.”

Faith chuckled. “Y’know, I really was. You may have driven me batshit making me repeat the plan over and over and over again, but I gotta admit that it paid off.”

“Don’t count our jewels just yet.” Xander couldn’t put any heart into correcting her, but he felt it still needed to be said. “There’s still a lot of work to do.”

“Don’t worry. I’m ready.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Also, I just want to say that choosing Revere was apparently big hit with the rubes,” Xander finally said.

“Toldjya. Trust the local.”

Xander rolled onto his side and lifted up the upper part of his body so he could look down on Faith’s placid face. “Still, I gotta wonder. Why Revere?”

“Because I knew it was the perfect place right from the get-go,” Faith answered.

Xander frowned down at her and shook his head. “No. It’s more than that. You’ve been spewing venom about this town from the second you suggested it. Hate like that? There’s a reason.”

“What the fuck do you care?” It sounded like a genuine question, as opposed to a warning that he back off.

Xander’s frown deepened. Did he care? The logical answer was no, but that wasn’t exactly right. The thing is, he didn’t not care. At least he didn’t not care in the way he understood it.

Maybe the word he was reaching for was curious. Yes? No? Except that wasn’t exactly right, either.

Maybe it he was somewhere between caring about the answer and simply being curious.

“Tell me,” he finally said in a soft, encouraging voice.

Faith blinked at him, as if she wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to the invitation. Her frown deepened as she lifted her hand to run a gentle finger down the right side of his face.

“Faith?” Xander prompted.

Faith’s hand dropped, but her eyes didn’t leave his face. “I never lived here, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

“Didn’t say you did.” Xander shook his head. “In fact, I thought you were a Boston girl through-and-through.”

“Boston, East Boston, Southie, Chelsea, Dorchester, Roxbury, Somerville, Everett, Quincy, and many, many more,” Faith sing-songed. “Wherever mommy dearest had to move to keep one step ahead of the bill collectors.”

Xander tilted his head, as if a new angle could give him more information. “Okay, so there’s no obvious connection between you and Revere, but don’t tell me that there isn’t a connection. There is. It’s practically branded right on your forehead.”

Faith was quiet a long time. The only sign that anything was going on in that head of hers was the way a corner of her mouth kept ticking.

“When I was 12? Maybe 13. No, it was 12,” Faith finally said. “I had this Uncle Jacob. For ‘uncle,’ read ‘mommy dearest’s latest and greatest lay’. Anyway, I liked him. He was…I guess ’cause he paid attention. Knew I was there. Saw me, as opposed to seein’ through me, which just about all the other uncles that passed through our front door did. Anyways, this one night mommy dearest was working one of her shit jobs, and Uncle Jacob decides he’s gonna take me to Revere Beach for ice cream. His treat, he says.”

Xander could already see where this was going. The question wasn’t, “Did he do bad things to you when he got here?” The question was, “Just how bad was it?”

“So, we get here, grab some cones, and he decides he wants to check out the old gang at The Tank. Actually, the real name was The Atlantic Lounge, but everyone called it The Tank. Fuck knows why. It had,” here Faith waved at the sky, “all these whales, and fishes, and ocean things painted all over outside the building. It was really cool-looking.”

“I didn’t see a building like that while driving around,” Xander said.

Faith shrugged. “Building’s still there, but it’s painted all white now. Saw the Atlantic sign hanging over the front door, but it looks like it’s been shut down. Not exactly shocked. Cops probably busted the place. It was cokehead’s dream back in the day.”

“You mean to tell me he dragged a kid in there because he wanted to score nose candy?” Xander shook his head. “Wait. This shouldn’t surprise me. Tony used to drag me into bars for ‘just one drink.’ Hours later there I’d be, asleep in the corner, and he’d be so drunk he was falling off his stool.”

Faith’s eyes took on a surprised, curious shine as she brought her hand up to caress his face. “Hunh. So you get it. Didn’t expect that.”

“I get it but…don’t,” Xander awkwardly said. He didn’t quite understand what was going on. His peace of mind was completely shattered and there was a tight feeling in the pit of his stomach that seemed to be tying itself in knots. He should be furious that Faith had wrecked his good mood. He should punch her in the face because of it. He should…

What, exactly?

The uncertainty froze him in place and stayed his hands as surely as if he’d been bound up in rope.

Faith dropped her hand so it flopped onto the gritty sand. “So we go in there with me licking my cone, and there’s Uncle Jacob giving hugs all around. For an hour or so, he keeps going into the men’s room with this buddy or that buddy and coming out 5 minutes later. Of course, I’m a nosy little shit. I’m all, ‘What are ya doin’ in there?’ Right? I guess I got to be a real bug about it, because he finally says he’s gonna take me into the men’s room so I can see the party for myself.”

“Oh, no,” Xander whispered.

Faith paused and looked at him like she’d never seen him before.

Xander didn’t blame her. He had no clue where that ‘oh, no’ even came from, let alone why he said it.

Faith looked beyond him, up at the stars. “So, Uncle Jacob lays me out a few lines on the bathroom sink and invites me to take a sniff.” There was a bitter laugh. “Shiiiiiit. I knew what it was. Even if it weren’t for the many, many shitty neighborhoods mommy dearest dragged me through, I was at that age when all those frigging D.A.R.E. vans start cruising the schools and puttin’ the fear of getting high into the little tykes. But what did I do? ’Cause it was Uncle Jacob tellin’ me it was cool. Stupid little shit.”

Xander knew the car crash was coming, and he felt powerless to do anything about it.

“My nose was on fire, my mouth was dry, my heart was beating a zillion miles a minute, I could feel my eyeballs buggin’, and I was kind of zoned out,” Faith said in a matter-of-fact voice. “And what does Uncle Jacob do? Drops to his knees, pulls down my pants, and goes muff diving. So there I am, riding a high and the good feelings from the pussy. There’s my hips jerkin’ up into his face and I’m all moaning and shit. I mean, I wanted to ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing, but I seemed to have lost my tongue or something because I couldn’t actually form any words. And then…” Faith tossed up a hand a gracefully waved it in a circle. “He decided he had enough with the muff diving, whips his dick out, and climbs right on board.”

Xander’s eye narrowed. “This Uncle Jacob. Know where he hangs these days?”

“Nah.” Faith’s expression ticked into something that was almost, but not quite a smile. “Fuck knows where he is. A few months after this all happened, he headed off to greener pastures and then mommy dearest had to move. I thought about looking him up when I made Slayer, but I never did know his last name.”

“Pity,” Xander said through clenched teeth.

“I like to think karma struck him dead or somethin’,” Faith said with wistful malice.

“Try to tell your mom?” Xander asked.

Faith shook her head in an exaggerated manner, causing her hair to flop around her head in waves across the sand. “Didn’t bother. Didn’t figure she’d believe me, sayin’ as Uncle Jacob was just about the only fine, upstanding citizen she ever screwed. Good job. Clean record. No obvious skeletons. A real catch.” Faith put a little extra venom in that last word.

Xander wasn’t sure why he did it, but he reached out and brushed an errant lock of hair off Faith’s forehead as he feverishly thought.

Faith seemed to be watching him, like she was trying to figure out what he was going to do next.

“You know,” Xander slowly began. “We’re still covered by that no-tracking spell, and we have a lot of fake I.D. A lot. Not to mention plenty of cash on hand. We could, I dunno, hang tight for two or three days. Maybe look in on your mommy dearest.”

Faith sat up and stared at him. A smile slowly stretched across her face. A real smile, with nothing sarcastic or predatory in it.

Xander wasn’t entirely sure what to make of her reaction. He was pretty sure standard operating procedure was to teach your crappy family a lesson they couldn’t survive. It was embarrassing to realize that he’d been so caught up in his plan that he hadn’t spared a thought for the idea that Faith might have some old scores to settle.

“Don’t even know if the old whore is still alive, let alone where she is,” Faith happily said. “’Sides, even if I did, I’d still tell you to forget it. She ain’t worth blowing the plan for.”

Xander shook his head. “We wouldn’t be doing it for her.”

Faith leaned forward and gently butted his forehead with hers. “I know.”

******

“Hey, you ever think about lookin’ up your sperm and egg donors?”

“Hunh?”

“You know. The ’rents. After.” Faith was sitting cross-legged on the sand. She had retrieved the plate of Kelly’s deep-fried fish food and was now tossing scallops into her mouth with relish.

“I thought about paying Tony and Jessica a visit. The urge lasted for about 2 weeks.” Xander waved off the plate when she held it out to him. The food had to be cold and gritty by now. So not appealing.

“I bet you were working out this wicked complicated plan and everything for your visit.” Faith knowingly nodded as she thoughtfully chewed on an onion ring. “Don’t try to deny it. I know I’m right.”

“I’ll have you know that wicked complicated plan would’ve worked, if I could figure out a way to go round-trip between Cairo and Vegas without being missed.” Xander chuckled at the memory.

“Ahhh, you wouldda worked it out.” Faith sounded surprisingly sure of it, as if she were stating a simple fact.

Xander leaned back onto his elbows and watched the soothing pattern of the waves crashing against the shore. “Probably. But once I heard about the jewel, I figured I had better things to do with my time.”

“Hey, if even half of what you told me about this jewel is true? I guess I don’t blame you for giving them a pass,” Faith said around a mouthful of food.

“Plus the fact there was no point to it.” Xander twisted his head to look at Faith, “They’ll do themselves in eventually. Moving to Vegas? Begging for death where those two are concerned. I’m pretty sure that by the time they die in the gutter, they’ll have lost the house they bought with the insurance money and the Sunnydale Citizens’ Disaster Relief Trust and pickled their livers along with their brains courtesy of all those free drinks in the casinos.”

“That’s what I like about you.” Faith swallowed her food. “You always think about the bright side.”

“Eternal optimist. That’s me,” Xander uncomfortably agreed. He had no idea why he went into even the little detail about his parents that he did. He could’ve just told her that he decided that getting his hands on the jewel was more important than chump-change revenge, yet he didn’t stop there.

Why?

The mystery bothered him on a deep level.

“Hey, wassup with you over there?” Faith asked. “You’re all quiet and shit. Don’t tell me you’re mentally rehearsing the plan again.”

“No, nothing like that,” Xander vaguely said.

Faith set aside her plate and leaned forward like she was studying him. “So?”

“What the fuck do you care?” Xander was surprised to hear that it sounded like a genuine question, as opposed to a warning that she back off.

“Tell me,” Faith said, mirroring his response when she asked him the exact same question earlier.

“Why Wonderland?” Xander asked. The question took him completely by surprise. It just popped out of his mouth without introduction or warning. Yet, the moment he asked it, he realized that he needed to know.

Faith seemed more surprised than he was. “Hunh?”

Xander sat up as he continued to study the ocean. “The train station. Why call it Wonderland?”

Faith’s eyebrows rose. “You mean the T-stop. In a normal part of the world, some might even call it a subway stop even though it’s above ground.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Could be because of that’s the name of greyhound race track a couple of blocks over. Could be because that’s the name of the ballroom that’s, like, right there on the other side of it.” Faith shrugged. “Could be because of the amusement park. I dunno.”

Xander leaned forward and scanned the entire length of the beach. “Amusement park? Where?”

“Ain’t one here no more.” Faith playfully tossed a cold fried scallop at his booted foot. “One of the guys who used to hang with my crew told us that back in the days before T.V. there was an amusement park located at the end of every T-line.”

Xander thought about that. “Aren’t there 4 subway lines through the city?”

“Yeah. So I guess that means a total of 8 amusement parks.” Faith snorted. “Ten-to-one none of ’em could be called spectacular, let alone a wicked good time.”

“But Wonderland…” Xander’s voice trailed off.

“It’s just a name.”

“Yeah, but nothing around here seems like all that much of a Wonderland to me,” Xander remarked.

“Hey, I thought you liked the beach.” Faith patted the patch of sand next to her like it was a pet.

“If it weren’t for the planes always flying overhead, the beach’d be fine,” Xander answered. “But why call it Wonderland? Why not Ocean View, or Waterside, or Spandex Central? Wonderland just strikes me as false advertising.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

Xander fixed her with a questioning look.

Faith uncomfortably shrugged. “Okay, yeah. That’s strange shit to hear outta me. Don’t make it any less true.”

“It’s because of Kelly’s deep-fried fish food, isn’t it?” Xander uncomfortably joked.

“That’s part of it. Part of it is how me and my buds back in the day would sometimes boost a car and come up here just as the sun was setting,” Faith said. “Summer, Winter, didn’t matter. We did it just do it and because we could, y’know?”

“I can kind of relate,” Xander said.

“We’d hit up Kelly’s, or one of the ice cream stands if they were open. Then we’d hit the beach, watch the waves, and have ourselves a feast.” Faith looked up at the stars. “We’d be laughin’, and jokin’, and shooting the shit. Times like that? You could almost call us all friends.”

“They weren’t your friends?” Xander asked. And once again, that uncomfortable feeling that he was caring despite that fact that he simply didn’t care — couldn’t care — curled through his mind like treacherous smoke.

Faith seemed to think about his question. “Yes and no, I guess. We were all pretty much losers who couldn’t get into any other social club.”

Xander snorted. “I think you just summed up the Scooby membership application.”

Faith narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. “I guess when you’re young and stupid there’s no friends like friends who ain’t got no other options.”

“Truer words,” Xander agreed.

Faith opened her mouth to say something when her cell phone trilled. She patted down her jean jacket and retrieved her cell. “Unfamiliar number,” she announced. “My money’s on Zoe.”

She flipped open her cell with a flick of her wrist. “Faith speaking.”

There was a pause.

“Good. Be there in 10,” Faith said.

She flipped her cell phone shut and grinned at Xander. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?” she cheerfully announced.

Xander checked his watch. “I got 10:30.”

“Yeah, we’re cutting it close,” Faith agreed as she got to her feet with a grunt.

As Faith began to turn away, Xander said, “Faith, remember. Make it quick and clean. We don’t have time to fuck around. But most importantly, don’t do anything that’ll draw attention to yourself.”

Faith tossed him a sloppy salute before finishing her turn and making a dash for the stairs up to the boulevard.

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