summer_of_giles | FIC: Hope Is The Thing With Feathers (F/G) R

Title: Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
Author:

mediumrawr
Pairing: Faith/Giles
Rating: 16 & Up. (R, FRM)
Warnings: Mentions child abuse, sexual abuse, and various other things associated with Faith's crappy life.
Timeline: Post-Chosen.
Disclaimer: Buffy et al. are originally the creation of Joss Whedon. Legal ownership of these creative products belongs to Mutant Enemy Productions.
Summary: No, I'm not sure how Faith got past airport security either. *Waves hands* There is no plot hole. Move along.

There had been a white dust like paint chips on her hands and her shoulders ever since she stepped off the plane into the gate at Heathrow. The dust left her thinking of asbestos. She had been just the right age to watch, as a child, the panic about asbestos in schools. It had been one of the first entries in her what-doesn't-kill-me list.

The address she had been given was, apparently, for a bar, or whatever they called a bar in England. A pub. The Hog and Oak. It was a run-down place. It was a place where working men drank, and forgot, and remembered. Had there been more Irishmen, she might have mistaken it for a childhood memory.

She caught the bartender's attention. He had that proudly-unshaven look going, and leered at her, but he had a wedding ring and she knew his type by the way he smiled and the way he buttoned his shirt. He liked to think he was still the roguish bachelor he never had been. The women he'd fucked had been more attracted to his unwitting vulnerability than his faked arrogance. Eventually, he had found a woman he loved, who loved him back, and now he would do anything for her. No matter how much he looked, he never even thought seriously about straying.

Not that she wouldn't have been able to get him in bed inside an hour, if she had wanted to.

"I'm looking for Rupert Giles," she said.

"Uh-huh," said the bartender. "You're Lehane?"

"Yeah."

"You don't sound Irish," said the bartender. He was polishing a glass with a rag that might once have been white, gray, or green.

"I'm from Boston."

"Uh-huh. Ripper's in the back. Ese -" he meant he's - "arguing with one of them Darfizzers."

"Yeah." Faith had no idea what a Darfizzer was, but she found an enclosed room in the back from which she could hear voices. She opened the door.

There was a round, three-legged table in the middle of the room. On one side sat a squat little man who might have been five feet tall but was definitely not an inch taller. He had red-brown skin like the clay-dirt in the Southwest and he was completely hairless, but he had a full beard of quills just like a porcupine's. He wore an old leather jacket ad ratty jeans. Faith judged that this was probably a Darfizzer. On the other side sat Giles.

The Darfizzer looked at her and growled, in a voice like rubble and lung cancer, "Who're you?"

"She's a friend," said Giles. "Eddie-"

"Slayer," growled the Darfizzer. "Y'brought a Slayer?"

"I'm sorry," said Giles. "You know what I'll do to keep the secret."

The Darfizzer growled again, but this time he didn't even bother with whole words. Eventually he stood and stalked past Faith and out of the room.

Faith turned her head to watch him go. As the demon walked out of the bar, the patrons all fell silent. They stared at their drinks and at each other and they didn't look at the demon except out of the corners of their eyes.

“What's the secret?” she asked Giles.

"You know," he said. "The big one. We used to call it that in the Council. Around here, it stuck."

She turned back to really look at him. His trusty sweater-and-jeans costume didn't really carry off the name the bartender had given him. Still, his hands were callused and there were lines on his jaw and face that looked more like scars than wrinkles. He could manage to be imposing. She had had a feeling maybe the second or third time she saw him, that he wanted to be the absent-minded professor but had never figured out quite how. "So," she asked, "what was that with Eddie?"

Giles smiled. The skin around his eyes crinkled. "Eddie is Edward K'throak, a third generation Dthar'fassal. It's a sad story, really. Refugees from a plane that has very little in common with this one. I hate threatening him, but I can't do anything to make him happy."

"What did he want?"

For a moment Giles watched her. Then he consulted his watch and, seeing, the time, stood. "Come on," he said. "We wouldn't want to get in the way of the world's longest card game."

"What?"

As he led her back out through the bar, Giles laughed. "I'm sorry, it's an inside joke. Messrs Berry, Johnson, and Alcott were playing five-card stud forty years ago, the first time I came here. To this day, their sons carry on the tradition. Every Thursday night. Nobody really remembers when it started."

Faith laughed.

"Come on," he said. "We'll have to grab a taxi."

The taxi dropped them at a corner. It was not a nice neighborhood. Where she came from, Faith would have called these buildings projects, but maybe here they just said cheap flats or something. She asked, "You live here?"

He snorted. "Not likely."

She had crossed six time zones, and evening had come. The city lights obliterated the stars. "So what are we doing here?"

"Answering your question," said Giles.

These were not the sorts of buildings with front desks, but, in the block Giles led her into, there was a man reading the Sun, sitting on a cheap folding chair that was propped against the wall. He folded the paper down to look at the pair. They looked back. He nodded and went back to his paper.

"Come on," said Giles. He was walking upstairs. She followed.

The smell assaulted her. All the doors were open, and people moved from room to room freely. There was not even a thought of privacy. Was people the right word? They were all demons.

Most were the Darfizzers or whatever Giles called them, but Faith spotted a green man no more than three feet tall - "Lap-rak-un," said Giles - and a strange, long, pale man that crawled around on all fours - "a not-wight," said Giles - and others. How tall was this building? How many rooms were within it? How many demons made this place home?

And that smell in the stale - in the thick air. Familiar. Too many people and not enough plumbers, or soap. "-thousands of them in this part of East End. It's the same-" but there were memories in this poverty. "-and Tokyo, and

Thirteen. A man lays his hand on her shoulder. smiling. He reaches for the buttons of her blouse. She puts her knee into his balls so hard he comes off the ground.

Six. Her mother has been declared unfit. That means she has to stay with her aunt now. Stephanie hits her every time she calls her Stephanie, but she does it anyway.

Eighteen. Darkness. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Nine. Back with her mother. Back in the slums. She meets a man named Bobby O'Malley, who tells her she might have a grand future with the movement. He's seen her fighting with boys three years older than her.

Nineteen. Two weeks since she came to prison. The other women like her. They see that she could fight them off and that she doesn't. They take everything they want from her. She deserves it.

Sixteen. There is a woman here to see her. She talks like she's British. She says "I'm sorry it's taken so long. Faith, I'm here to help."

Faith," said Giles.

"Sorry," she said. She blinked over and over again. "Memories."

He looked around at the crumbling walls and at the corners where white dust like paint chips collected. "Yes. I lived in a place much like this once."

"You?"

"After I fled the Council. Before I met Ethan." He frowned thoughtfully. "Actually, it was worse then. There's been a lot of money in the East End lately. Hard as that is to believe."

This place was worse than Sunnydale. It was worse than Los Angeles, where demons drove Porsches with magic windows.

"You asked what Eddie wanted. He wants what everyone wants. He wants to be able to go out in public without pretending to be someone else." He checked his watch. "Come on. Let's get dinner."

"I ate on the plane."

"I didn't," said Giles. As he led her down the stairs, he gave her a flash of a smile. "And you're a Slayer, and you will eat anything."

"Wow, G. You sure know how to butter a lady up."

But Giles assured her that the best curry in the city was no more than three blocks away, and an hour later she would have bet the Dalai goddamn Lama he was right.

In the taxi afterward, she asked "So what's the big fuss?"

"Sorry?"

"You didn't drag me all the way here from Chicago to scare Short Eddie."

"Oh. No," said Giles. He looked out the window. "Sorry about that. Using you as muscle, I mean."

Faith shrugged. "I'm a Slayer, G. I am muscle."

They stopped at a much nicer building. Giles's place, she assumed, though he had not spoken.

Faith brushed again at the specks of white dust that clung still to her shoulders. It was overcast, she thought, though it was hard to tell in the city night. A place like that might really have asbestos.

"You ever wonder?" she asked. "I mean, if everyone in that bar back there knew, and everyone in Sunnydale knew and just sort of wouldn't talk about it, and half of Los Angeles knew... you know, who are we keeping the secret from?"

"It's," Giles said, but he didn't say more for a long time. When they were in the elevator, finally, he said, "Yes, I wonder."

"So?"

"I'm not proud of who I am. I've learned to accept it. But I've-"

The elevator stopped. The door opened. An old lady waited, clutching her purse.

"Miss Merryvale," said Giles, exiting.

"Mister Giles," said Miss Merryvale, peering as he passed.

"I think I just ruined your reputation," said Faith.

"I'll survive."

They walked the rest of the hall in silence. Faith wondered if most apartment buildings in London had elevators. Was it a symbol of the very rich or of the sort-of rich, or of the upper-middle class pretending not to be rich? Giles turned his key in the lock. Stranger things had happened.

It was a big apartment, but it was the decor that was surprising. The few pieces of exotic art clashed with mementos. Old Christmas cards were stacked on top of an antique end table. A figurine that Giles had once said was from tenth century France stood next to a snowglobe from Sunnydale, which had seen about two inches of snow in a hundred years.

He closed the door behind her. "I've killed people," he said without preamble. "Not just by accident and not in, uh, in the heat of the moment."

"Shit," she said. She fiddled with the edges of her pockets. "You do what you gotta. I know that."

"Yes," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm not being clear."

They stood, awkwardly, just inside the entryway.

"I asked you to come because I haven't seen you in almost six months, Faith. And - and you are important to me. And I haven't got much else."

"Shit," said Faith again. She checked her watch. "You should have said. I'll get Vi to send my stuff up. You got a spare bedroom?"

"Er, yes," Giles said. He waved with his left hand. "Your stuff? You mean you're - "

"Too late to back out now, G," said Faith, breezing past him into the apartment. She would have to start calling it a flat. "You wanted me. Now you're stuck with me."

"Faith," said Giles. His tone was totally serious.

She turned back to him. Out of respect, she contained her energy.

His voice trembled just a little. "Faith," he said. "Thank you."

"No sweat," she said. She offered him a smile, which was the least she could do.

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