Work Text:
Fic: Memories
Author: norgco
Type: Au femslash,
Couples: Faith/Cathy (original) Cathy/David (original)
Summary: Faith, out of prison, meets someone from her past.
Feedback: In the name of humanity yes.
Note: There is a prison rape in this story. The guards comment is one a friend of mine actually heard from a serving prison guard. I did not make that up.
Memories
by norgco
Faith walked down the alley with the smooth grace of a stalking tiger. On her first night out of prison she had felt the need to walk the City of Angels, just to be able to. But the feel was not right; she sensed something down this way.
Angel had wanted to ease her back into slaying, after so long out of it, but the restlessness had woken her. The sounds of fighting came suddenly, and she sprinted to them. A man and a woman, backed against a wall, with four closing in. She attacked.
The two closest to her turned to dust without knowing they were even in danger. Staked from behind, as the others swung around to face the running woman. A big woman with red hair was next, this time she kept the stake and lunged into the last one as he was opening his mouth to
speak.
"Four in under five seconds, DAMN I'm good." The dark slayer was pumped from the fight, and feeling on top of the world. Angel had encouraged her to think of the lives she could save, and feel pride in that, as a counterbalance to her love of the fight itself, to '...keep you from walking the dark path again'. "So, my Yoda is a souled vampire, Lucas would still approve."
"Faith, is that you?" Sudden longing and heartache, that voice, so familiar, so desperately missed. The Boston slayer turned to the near victims; it was Cathy and some guy. The husband she had talked about in their cell, he fit the description. "Always saving me, aren't you Silk?"
Three months since she was paroled, Cathy looked better than Faith had ever seen her. The man - David? - was not as puzzled as might be expected, what had her beloved told him about her prison time? He did not even seem surprised by the name Silk. But surely he had felt the fine hair on his wife's naked back, commented on its silky texture, how could anyone not?
"Hello, I'm David Langston, and you would be Faith, the super hero, I take it?" His tone showed an interesting mix of awe, surprise and fear. Stepping up to his wife's former cellmate, he extended his hand to her. "Lets go somewhere safer and talk."
Cathy hugged her and started them back down the alley towards a doorway. It opened into a club, fairly quiet at this time in the morning. They were cleaning up, and looked annoyed until they saw who it was.
"You ok Mr Langston, I thought you were going home?" said the man behind the bar.
"We were attacked in the alley, but it's ok now. Finish up, I will tell you about it in the morning." Firm, but friendly and reassuring, this was clearly the man in charge. This was clearly his environment, and as he pulled chairs down and started the espresso machine it showed. "Faith, you prefer a long espresso right?"
"Yeah, sure." Cathy told him that much about me? Ok, so either he wants a threesome or he's putting Arsenic in the coffee. Black coffee hides all kinds of things, as a fellow convict who had killed her family that way had explained once. "Look, it's been nice to see you but I really should be going, I mean..."
"I owe you more than I can ever really repay, at least allow me to get you a coffee." Cathy was a blonde vision in a red dress that sparked in the lights, her husbands voice a little pleading in tone.
The three were alone now, the last of the staff having left through the front in view of the 'troublesome elements' in the rear alley. "And I owe you an apology."
Faith looked at him, puzzled, as he put her coffee and a huge slice of Lemon Cheesecake in front of her. Again, a favourite she had spoken longingly about to her cellmate in 'what's the first thing you will do when you get out?' talks. It was better than her memories said it ever could be, so was the coffee.
"Apology?"
"Cathy didn't visit you in three months." A capable man in his own environment, he was looking her in the eyes as he spoke. He held his wife's hand, and then it happened. Cathy reached for Faith's hand. "It was my fault, I couldn't get enough of her, and I was terrified of losing her."
"I will never leave you Dave." Cathy kissed her husbands hand, and hugged him quietly, as she had done for the Dark Slayer so many times. Quiet comfort was always her style. "I didn't stop loving you when I fell in love with Faith."
The Boston slayer nearly choked on her coffee. Then she started crying, softly at first, then gradually into great racking sobs. All the pain she had felt at being left behind, apparently forgotten by her first love. Three months of trying to tell herself she was alright, that the feeling of abandonment was nothing. Her Cath was back again.
Cathy Langston, freshly sentenced for attempted murder, was being raped in the showers the first time Faith saw her. The guards ignored it, as they did with 'fresh meat'. One had told her straight out 'it makes them more controllable'. Presumably the guard in question was out of traction and learning to walk again by now.
Still, the attitude was there, and so was a trio from one of the gangs, holding the statuesque blondes legs open as one tried to shove a clenched fist into her. The dark slayer put them into the prison hospital, and managed to get the victim standing under a shower looking innocent when the guards finally entered and started questioning people. Cathy was assigned as her cellmate that day. Eventually Faith learned how she had gotten away with so much, at the time she just did what she had to.
They were an odd pair, Faith, from a poor alcoholic single mother and dropout background, with Cathy the accountant, who had had only love and respect right up to the incident leading to her arrest. Cathy, who was lost, scared, and thoroughly traumatised by it all. Faith, who was getting three meals a day and a place to sleep without committing a crime for the first time since her original Watcher was killed. She had paid the bills by hooking before and after that, except for the time she was working for the Mayor.
At first Faith had tried to keep Cath at a distance, not knowing what else to do. She wasn't after a bedmate, had not rescued the taller woman for that reason. When Cath had first come on to her the dark slayer had turned her down, seeing a sex for protection deal as being what was on offer, Cathy offering to whore herself to Faith. Having been a whore, the dark slayer did not want to be a John.
But as they had talked, the wealthier woman had comforted the younger, and love had blossomed. To Faith, who had fucked anything male, and arguably raped Xander, but only been made love to when inhabiting Buffy's body, it was a revelation. Cath was comforting and supportive, listened and talked, and genuinely cared about her ups and downs. She had never actually lusted after a woman, had not looked at a woman's body and felt the stirring of need. Cath changed all that.
Eventually a series of rather odd legal manoeuvres had set both free. Cath, like every prisoner except Faith, had proclaimed her innocence. Eventually an appeal had proven this true, and she was released, promising regular visits that never happened. Faith had been cleared of charges she knew full well she was guilty of, as well as not being punished for smashing the guard to bloody pulp.
The guard alone should have been at least another decade. Various prisoners with broken ribs, arms, etc should have added impressively to the total. Instead she was out. Apparently Giles had spent his long stays in England convincing the Watchers to get her out and "...use her proclivities to violence for positive ends..."
When he had explained this to her, she had asked how he handled the 'old school' like Travers. Apparently there had been a series of fatal Vampire attacks and car accidents. Ripper had come out to play, burying Buffy, after all the help he had been denied be the council, had convinced him it was needed. Giles had sat in his quiet, tweed wearing way, and explained what he would do to Faith if she let him down again. It involved no third chance, and a great deal of pain and begging to die.
With the Watcher firmly behind him it was a simple matter to 'persuade' the Governor of California to give her a full pardon. The demon brothels he had been frequenting had complained about him being too rough with the girls. Persuade sounds so much better than blackmail, really, not that Faith cared. Cathy's release had been due to her and her husband's family's efforts.
And so now here they sat, at 4am on a Wednesday morning in LA, with a lot to think about. David Langston was afraid of losing the woman who mattered more to him than anything. The doubts he had had over his wife's stories about Faith had vanished in Vampire dust. He had
committed himself to trying to make it work out, which meant at least making friends with his wife's lover.
Cathy Langston sat with the two people she loved desperately; convinced these two good people could join her without tears. David had stood by her through the trial, imprisonment, and her frank
discussion of the lesbian affair she had started with a self confessed murderer. Faith had learned to love, to value life while coming to terms with her dark past, and was a genuine heroine. She
would make them a family.
Faith was too emotional to really think straight, but she had real hope in her life for the first time in a long time. And the only other time she had been working for the Mayor. The husband of her beloved looked and seemed ok. If the worst he ever did was think she was good enough for his wife to want to leave him for, she could live with that. It was a higher opinion of her than she had had of herself the day she met Cath.
The three sat, sipping their coffee, tired and coming down from the peak of the last hour. It would be an interesting time ahead, but for now there was a little peace and good coffee. There would be enough time for problems later, but for now there was time for more pleasant things
END