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Alignment
by Lar
EMAIL: larshine@comcast.net
RATING: PG-13 (language)
SUMMARY: Some appointments must be kept.
DEDICATION: To Kassie and Donna and Sam, for much hand holding
and head patting, and threatening when needed. They all coaxed this
out of me after I hit the wall. Moreover, to Kassie for the idea, to Donna
for the insight, to Sam for the Wesley seal of approval. Special thank you
to Spyke Raven, who knows just what to say.
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings; its malignity.
- S. Plath, "Elm"
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
Twice a month.
Faith looks forward to the visitor who comes every other week. It's 15 minutes
of pure down time, and she knows it will be safe. Safe to relax and just joke
about things no one else would find funny. She takes extra care to have
something to tell him when he comes, something to add to his tales of justice
served and deeds of derring-do. She wants to see the look of pride come
sneaking into his dark eyes and feel like she's taken another step forward on
Redemption Boulevard.
When the guard comes to escort her down the corridor that reeks of urine and
anger, Faith is as close to happy as she gets in this place. She's got an anecdote
in her head that she's rehearsing, about the big bull-dyke who tried to feel her
up in the shower the other day. The stupid bitch took one look at Faith's
comparatively small size and all but shouted "fresh meat!" before coming on like
a water buffalo in heat. Faith snickers as she remembers the look on the girl's face
and the way she sidestepped the charge, slapped the girl on the back and said,
"Not my type, Bertha." Laughed and turned her back and walked away.
No fighting. No injuries. She is learning.
And that at least will earn her the look, and the verbal pat on the head that she
needs so much. Because what she really wanted to do was grab the bitch in the
shower, snap most of the bones in her arm, and then toss her to the tiled floor.
She wanted the screams, wanted everyone who had been stealing glances to see
her bang the big wet head on the floor until the bones crunched and the skin
split and the tiles turned red. She wanted it so badly that when she got dressed
there were smears of blood on her clothes, marks from the open wounds on her
palm where she cut the skin open with her own nails. Hands clenched to keep
them from hurting anyone else.
So when she rounds the corner and takes her seat, she is so psyched to see Angel
that she's grinning like a kid. She has the phone in her hand and the words, "Hey,
Angel, man, how's it going?" are out before she realizes there's something wrong.
Because the man sitting there isn't smiling back, and it's not Angel at all.
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
Wesley tried in vain to get Angel up and out of the hotel. He learned the hazards
of directly waking him during his increasingly disturbed dreams, and had instead
taken to standing at the doorway, well out of reach, and pounding on the open
door. With a shoe. A boot, really, one of Angel's own that Wesley had taken on the
sly. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn't, and today is one of the latter
occasions. Wesley grips the boot with frustrated tension and represses the almost
overwhelming urge to fling it across the room right into the sleeping vampire's face.
He tries one more time, banging away with enough strength to leave black indentations.
"Angel!" he shouts. "It's visitation day! Faith will be expecting you!"
Nothing. He does toss the boot now, but it lands safely on the floor beside the bed,
and the Angel does nothing at all. He continues to smile gently at the visions in his
head as Wesley stalks away, muttering dark curses under his breath.
As he stomps down the stairs, hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks, he cannot
help but think to himself that he might just have gone around the bend completely.
There is no reason in the world for him to not just go downstairs and have a nice cup
of tea with Cordelia, perhaps update the database while they chat. He could go home
early and get some well deserved, and much needed, rest. But he knows that what he's
going to do is gather up his jacket and make the drive out to the prison himself.
Wesley hasn't seen Faith since...well, since she had beaten him senseless, knocked out
Cordelia, and tried to kill Angel. There was that brief flurried moment when he had
come down to warn them all of the Council's hired hands there to take the girl back,
and he thinks to himself again that she had looked so confused then. She had looked,
quite frankly, like a terrified child, and his heart had given a painful thump of
commiseration. He knew that protecting her from the Council was the right thing to
do, and he wondered if she knew that he had done it as much for her as for Angel.
And this is perhaps what urges him to go there tonight and keep the appointment
that Angel has established. He feels the pull of kindred spirits with Faith in ways that
would cause her to protest most vehemently. After all, Wesley imagines she is a
young woman down deep inside and finds it terribly romantic to align herself with
Angel, two dark souls on the tortured path to salvation. Where is the romance in
acknowledging kinship with someone like himself? Admitting that you are indeed
alone and lonely and desperately in need of ...
Wesley grabs his jacket from the chair in the lobby, glares fiercely at Cordelia when
she asks him where he's going, and slams the door of the hotel behind him.
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*
"Wesley." Faith's heart is hammering in her chest so hard that she is sure he can see
it through the thin material of her uniform. She has no idea why he is here instead of
Angel, unless... "Oh Jesus Christ, Wes! Angel, is he ... is he?" She stops and swallows
hard, unable to even complete the thought, let alone the sentence.
He hastens to reassure her, "Oh no, no! Nothing like that. He's just on a case, and he
couldn't get away."
Wes watches her compose herself and marvels at the way he both wants to reach
through the glass and strangle her
(( if you'd been a better Watcher, I might have been a more positive role model ))
and at the same time wants to take her in his arms. Wants to comfort her much as Angel
had in the alley, in the rain, while he stood and watched.
No one had been there to soothe his hurts, physical or mental. He recalls dropping the
knife he was carrying with a hand that trembled in anger and exhaustion and walking
right away from them. He'd been angry many times in his life, and it was second nature
to him at the time to suppress it and pretend all was fine. He had gotten himself to the
hospital, claimed the injuries were from a mugging in another part of town, and went
home with enough pain killers to knock out an elephant. He took none of them. Instead
he laid awake all night fighting tears of pain and anger and utter anguish, until morning
came and he went in to work. Same old routine.
Father would be so proud.
Faith is staring at him now, but there's no malice in her eyes. In fact her body language
is screaming "don't hurt me," which is nothing if not ridiculous, at least in Wesley's
opinion. Who had ended up with bruises and sprained limbs and cuts and stitches from
their last encounter? Certainly not Faith. He'd been tied to the chair while she
(( We've done blunt - but that still leaves sharp, cold, hot and loud. Have a preference? ))
had enjoyed breaking him one piece at a time.
Wesley swallows hard as he represses a phantom sympathy pain and sees her flinch as
she notices. They're both holding onto their receivers, staring at each other and saying
absolutely nothing. Searching each other's eyes, looking for an opening. And then he
sees her take a deep gulp of air, and finds his hand clenching up painfully on the black
plastic.
"I'm sorry, Wesley."
And there it is. Said out loud for the first time. The words he wanted so badly to hear
so he could laugh at her and toss them back into her face. The words he knew she could
never muster up, because she really wasn't sorry; she had enjoyed hurting him, had
enjoyed his pain and his helplessness. She had seemed to be
(( all these little cuts and bruises bring out the mother in me ))
almost aroused by it, her legs tight around him as she had squirmed on his lap and
licked her fingers, rubbing them over his face.
Wesley flushed suddenly, remembering how, despite the pain - or perhaps in part because
of it - he had responded to her then, had felt himself swell towards the warmth of her as
she wriggled and taunted him. Throwing his own superior attitude back in his face by
showing him that no matter what he might have said to her
(( even if you kill me, there is just one thing I want you to remember ... you are a piece
of shit ))
he did indeed see her as more than merely his former charge. He saw her as a woman,
a beautiful one, one he could never have, luscious, forbidden fruit and there was always
that Watcher/Slayer taboo to rely on. Only there wasn't now. Not anymore.
Now he had the damn apology, and he wanted so badly to tell her what she could do with
it. He wanted to say to hell with her and her apology, and that he was only here to ... to ...
let her know that Angel couldn't make it. Yes, right, that was it. So...
"Thank you, Faith."
Faith blinked. She had been expecting something different from that response. A long
lecture about how sorry was just a word, coupled with how he had doubts that someone
like her could even realize what regret was let alone take responsibility for their actions.
Even a well deserved "fuck you, Faith" would have been on her top five list of responses.
Something more British perhaps, something she couldn't even think of because she had
been away from him for so long that she couldn't remember how he sounded until today.
And she had thought about him a lot.
She had spent a good deal of time here with nothing to do but think, and Wesley came to
her mind quite often. She felt bad about all the things she had done, but almost every time
she tried to wrap her mind around how she had hurt Wesley, it would turn aside and try to
hide. So when Faith wanted to think about Wes, it required concentration and effort. And it
hurt. It hurt on many levels, some of which she barely had the strength to even acknowledge.
She recalled how he had, even in his obvious fear, reached out to her and offered to help.
Back in Cordelia's apartment. Right before she had knocked him out and dragged him off
and...
After all that, after everything she had done to him, he had still gone up against the Council
for her when they came to take her away. She knew that he had probably done that more
for Angel than for her, but still. He could have turned her in, gotten rid of her forever, and
he would have had every right. As far as Faith saw it, he had offered his hand to her on
more than one occasion to help, and every time she spit in it. But here he was again,
coming back for more. Like he had some jones for her rejection.
The last thing she expected was to be able to offer him her apology and have him accept
it. But he had, just like that. Accepted it and thanked her for it.
Something tight and hard inside of Faith let go then, just a little, and she smiled. To her
surprise, Wesley was smiling just a little, too.
"What?" she asked him. "What are you smiling at?"
He cocked his head to the side and didn't lose the smile. But he didn't answer her either.
He was thinking that Angel was more clever than Wesley had given him credit for. All those
times he had dropped comments to them about Faith's progress. All the tiny little reports of
her condition. Of her health, and her recuperation, and her good spirits. Of her surprising
softness despite her present location. Neither Wesley nor Cordelia had ever acknowledged
them, but Cordelia had stopped stomping off at the mention of Faith's name, and Wesley
himself had been unwittingly relieved to hear that she was getting along. He realized now
that Angel had been softening them up for the day when Faith would be free, and perhaps
back in their lives. The bastard had succeeded in softening Wesley enough to get him here
today, to have him hear and accept her apology.
He was most likely now back at the hotel, not asleep at all, if he ever had been to begin
with, and feeling quite pleased with himself.
"Wes?" Faith was tapping on the glass, furtively because it wasn't allowed, and she tried
not to make waves whenever possible. "Share the joke?"
"I'm sorry, Faith. I was just thinking ... has Angel told you about his recent trips to the
karaoke bar?" Wesley leaned forward a bit and prepared to tell her a little story, something
Angel said she enjoyed.
Faith relaxed back in her chair, big smile on her face. "You mean the whole Barry Manilow
gig?"
Delighted, Wes continued, "Oh no! Much worse than that. It seems he had an emergency
visit to the club, you see, and the only songs there to choose from that night were eighties
pop..."
Only half listening to him, Faith watched as Wesley relaxed and relayed the story. He was
smiling and gesturing as if they were having lunch, long lost friends catching up on the
details of their lives. It was...nice. It wasn't what she had with Angel, but that wasn't
something anyone else could give her anyway. This was something she could learn to like,
quite a lot in fact. She was laughing out loud when he finished, earning herself a stern look
from the guard that did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm.
"Five minutes!" the guard barked at them, and Faith waved her hand impatiently to show
she had heard.
"Faith..." Wesley was serious again and she leaned up close to the glass to meet his eyes.
"Can I send you anything? Is there something you need?"
She looked down then. He wanted to *send* her something. Meaning, he wasn't coming
back. This was a one time deal, his duty to Angel not to her, and if Angel had been able to
get here then Wes would never have come. Faith fought down the disappointment in the
knowledge that she had kind of been looking forward to the next visit, and there just wasn't
going to be one.
"No, I'm five by five," she mumbled back, and got ready to hang up the phone.
Wesley knows that look - that *lack* of a look in fact - because he himself has used it many
times to hide his own disappointment. His heart lurches just a little as he understands that he
has hurt her somehow, and this was not his intention at all. He assumed she would prefer
her privacy here, might be embarrassed by having someone like him come to see her, that
she only wanted to see Angel because he was guiding her along.
He thinks to himself again how alike they are, he and Faith, whether she will ever see it or
accept it herself. It makes him feel tender towards her, protective, because God knows there
was never anyone there to take care of him when he was frightened and alone and needed
someone to be by his side. He puts a tentative hand on the glass and watches her jump,
startled when it hits her line of sight.
Dark, fathomless eyes look slowly up and meet his. He takes his hand away and says again,
"Do you need anything?" He straightens up in his chair, leans back casually, as if this is
nothing at all, no big deal. "I could bring it with me. The next time I come."
Her eyebrows raise at that and he bites the inside of his cheek in order to keep a neutral
face. She might take a smile as offensive, as if he were mocking her. And frankly, he is
waiting for her to reject the suggestion. But she is leaning back now, mirroring his
carefully relaxed mannerisms, and tossing her hair back while she thinks.
"Chocolate," is her answer. She grins at him, because he is already smiling back at her.
The guard is there then, taking her away before they can say good-bye and before he
can tell her when he'll be back, but she gives him a wink and a wave of her hand so he
knows its all OK. He hangs up the phone with a feeling of satisfaction and takes his time
getting out to the bike. He thinks he might make a stop back at the hotel before going home.
To let them know how Faith is doing.
~end.
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