Chapter Text
February 7, 2005
Buffy Summers
Somewhere South of Cannon Beach, Oregon
A year or so before splitting up, Buffy’s parents brought her to the Oregon coast for a long weekend. The damp May air frizzed her mother’s hair and caused arcs of sweat to materialize around her father’s armpits. It felt cold – colder than the Valley, anyway, and Buffy reveled in wearing her winter jacket on the beach. She clambered over rocks and searched the misted horizon for pirate ships.
The beach – miraculously – looks the same way it does in these memories. Rocky grey stones, smooth with age, give way to a wide expanse of turbid ocean.
“Once you get this sorted, maybe you can stop by Cannon Beach,” Giles had told her.
“I’m not going to the beach in February. At least not north of LA.” Times change.
She was meant to go alone. It was a simple mission, after all. Locate the fortune teller, sus her out and get the hell back to Scotland. She still wasn’t sure why Giles was so worried about this woman in the first place. Buffy half-expected to walk into a palm reader’s dusty booth on a small-town pier. But if Giles (and Willow for that matter) thought spending time with the woman was important, then who was she to say no?
Three days before her flight to Seattle, Giles knocked on her bedroom door.
“Come in. I’m just about to go downstairs and get something to eat.”
I though your appetite might lessen as you age.”
“Fat chance. Slaying makes you hungry.” Isn’t that what Faith said way back when they were teens? Hungry and horny.
“I’ve been in touch with Faith. She’s going to accompany you on this mission.”
Faith had been running special op trainings and generally watching over Cleveland for a year now. She and Buffy worked the most dangerous missions, trading off on tasks. They had collaborated exactly three times in the past eighteen months – all for establishing training fundamentals at base. Buffy respects Faith. She appreciates her, has forgiven her. Faith has been in therapy for years, paid her dues, apologized.
But working with Faith and only Faith made her heartbeat flutter and her throat clench. Surely removing the two most experienced slayers from regular duties warranted some kind of apocalypse, not some kind of fraud.
“Where did you say this fortune teller was located, B?” Faith asks beside her. She holds a map out direct in front of her, losing a valiant battle with the wind, trying to keep it steady.
“133 Cedar Park,” Buffy repeats.
Faith, for her part, seemed unfazed by Giles’ request. In fact, she’s spent the trip regarding Buffy with as much interest as she might do an artsy film – a dutiful if not bored stare. Buffy feels the gap between them tug her forward and down. Faith has always held a little corner of Buffy’s heart and brain. She wrote Faith a letter once, after she’d come back from the dead, but ripped it up after signing it. She thought once that Faith cared for her. Not when they were friends, exactly (though maybe a little then) but when they were enemies. And now, are they friends again? Allies at the very least.
Allies who’ve had exactly seven conversations from meeting in Seattle. Short, clipped ones. Which exit is it? WA-432. Where are we spending the night? Cedar Lodge. What do you want for lunch? Dunno. Maybe there’s a Subway’s nearby? Buffy wants to ask Faith real questions: why she went back to prison after Sunnydale fell into the earth, for example. She’d waited four months before going, helped get the young slayers settled and the training schedules organized. Faith was well-organized – better than Buffy had expected. Then, a week after Giles found a site for them all in Cleveland, she disappeared. Only, one of Angel’s people had worked a charm so that no one had any memory of Faith or her record. Some kind of thank-you for a favor Faith did them. Only then did Faith meander back to the group.
“Buffy!”
Buffy blinks. Faith stands five paces in front of her. “Sorry.”
The pair march along the sidewalk lining the beach. Buffy can feel the back of her heel start to blister. She grimaces. Willow did tell her to wear better shoes.
“I think it’s up this hill,” Faith says. She points to a green-grey mound spotted with one-story homes.
Buffy groans. She meets Faith’s gaze.
Faith’s brow is furrowed. “What’s up B?”
“Blisters,” Buffy admits.
“Tough break.”
Buffy shrugs. “Let’s just find this lady.” Swallowing, she clears her throat. “Do you know why Giles is so big on getting her deets?”
Faith begins to cross the empty street. February in rural Oregon belongs to mist and trees. “Thought you’d have a better picture of it.”
“I wish. I’m not sure why he needs us.” She falls in stride with Faith and then begin to climb the steep sidewalk up the hill. Each time she takes a step forward, pain slices her heel. Skin at the back of a slayer’s heel has no business being this delicate.
“Prevent the big bad. Save the world before it starts to end.”
“Again.”
Faith laughs. “Again.”
Back in high school, Buffy always felt a little triumphant when she made Faith laugh. Now, a familiar warmth floods her system. “This woman better have an army of vamps and a treasure trove of demons.”
“Treasure trove?
“You know what I mean.” Buffy grins at her. Teasing feels good. They should tease each other more often.
Faith shrugs. “Maybe Giles just wanted to send us on a nice trip to the forest.”
“Ha!” Buffy rolls her eyes. “Right.”
Faith’s lips part – gosh they’re full aren’t they? – and then press together. “Yeah, maybe a demon treasure drove.”
A cold mist begins to blow down the hill toward them. Buffy feels her face growing wet. She grits her teeth.