Chapter Text
Point of Divergence
Author: Norgco
Cautions: As usual with my fic, mention of Female/female sex and romantic links, as well as f/m and f/m/f etc. If you don't like that essentially any of my work will be a problem to you.
Fandoms: Buffy/Little Shop Of Horrors
Summary: Another alternative path from the 'night of the zeppo', Faith does not respond well to a classic gift. At first.
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with BtVS
Feedback: Please.
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Point of Divergence
by Norgco
The point of divergence, as alternate reality theory calls these things, was when Xander Harris realized that Faith's tough girl act was just that, an act because the idea that it was her being rebellious or self destructive had never entered his head before. She was having sex as often as he wished he did, he was horny and envious, and in the main timeline it didn't occur to him that there was a problem.
The specific incident that changed the timeline was his decision to do something nice and traditional.
"What the hell are these?" Faith had angrily demanded to know, shaking the object in question at the Zeppo across the library table.
"At a guess they are roses, though I could be wrong." Giles responded from the doorway to his office.
"They're a dozen long stemmed red roses Faith." Xander said, totally unintimidated. He could see he had done something wrong, yet again. He wanted to know what, and had long since realized that he would never get anywhere if he let his fears stop him from doing what needed to be done. Hence telling Buffy he would kill her if Willow died, hence starring down Angelus and the zombie mad bomber. "Faith, if you tear me limb from limb you will never know why I sent them,
will you."
The dark slayer was badly thrown, first by the roses and the card, and now by the total calm on the face of boytoy. Most people were intimidated by her when she was in a bad mood, even if they just thought of her as a skinny girl. Xander, the guy who kept getting thrown around all the time, was just looking at her like one of those Zen swordsmen in bad martial arts flick. She half expected him to say 'Ah, grasshopper, what troubles you?'
"Faith, if your allergic to roses I'll send Tulips next time."
"Tulips?" Faith screamed at him.
"A nice, low maintenance cactus maybe?"
Rupert Giles was watching the scene with fascinated incomprehension. The Harris boy had, for some reason, made a romantic gesture to the second slayer, who responded to it with anger.
"Giles, why is Faith angrily waving a bunch of roses in Xander's face." Willow asked from the doorway. There was no answer from the watcher except for a shrug, and a look that managed to say 'who knows why American teenagers do anything?' The door opened again and Cordelia walked in.
"Giles, why is the skank angrily waving a bunch of flowers at looserboy?"
"Because I don't know what else to do!" The younger slayer yelled.
"Well you could say, 'thank you Xander, the flowers are beautiful', though it might be a bit old fashioned." Giles replied. It seemed like a simple, non-committal sort of response appropriate to the gift "That would buy you enough time to decide on a more detailed response, such as asking what they were for, or, if you already know that, suggesting a response of your own."
"Faith, you did read the card, right?" Harris asked. He was going over in his head what his alternatives were, from a lifetime of experience of talking to people who could and would hospitalize him for saying the wrong word. That the dark slayer was not his father just meant she was more likely to connect with each punch, after all.
"No, I was too angry I..." The emotions running over the Boston slayer's face were many and varied. "Damn you Xander, why can't you just fuck me and forget me like everyone else?"
Willow was suddenly in shock; Xander did it with this tramp? Cordelia was trying to decide whether to be angrier with him for apparently forgetting her so quickly, or forgetting her with Faith. Giles was dreading the explosion of teen angst he saw developing. Xander looked calm and collected, because he was.
"Because Faith, if sex isn't fun and friendly, WHY ARE YOU DOING IT? If we weren't before, we are officially friends now." He was standing up and slowly walking around the desk to her, slowly so as to avoid triggering the evident combat reflexes. "And I never forget or abandon my friends. I would die first."
"Xander how could you?" Willow said, crying at the idea of him with Faith. She was breaking down in front of him, and all he could do was tell the truth. Too much damage had been done by keeping secrets.
"It was easy." The Zeppo said to his oldest friend. "You had a choice between me and Oz, and you chose Oz. You have no right to be angry with me for moving on. Cordelia refused to have me back, so she has a right to be angry at me for what WE did, but not for my being with Faith."
"Well I think, I, ah, need to double check my book index." Giles said quickly, not wanting to be in the room when the various sputterings from the girls turned into explosions. "Absolutely crucial to the functioning of a good library after all, the cross referenced book index, yes, ah, well, if you need me I will be in my office."
"Faith, whether you like it or not you officially have a friend now. I don't abandon friends, even when they abandon me, as you'd know if you've been following recent Scooby gang events." It was a calculated risk and he knew it, the Boston slayer was clearly running on adrenaline in a situation totally outside her previous experience. Slayers in such situations seemed to respond with instinctive violence, 'when in doubt, kill' to quote the original Rambo movie.
"AHHH." Was Faiths verbal response to this explanation. Her physical response, occurring at the same time, was to punch into the library table in frustration, smashing it into two pieces. With this typically Faith display over she stormed out of the room. Giles peaked around the doorway nervously, teenage emotions had that affect on him, then walked out to the pile of shattered timber.
"That went better than I originally thought it would." The Watcher said, in the ensuing silence.
"You mean skank-o-rama might have smashed up even more furniture?" Cordelia asked.
"She seemed ready to hit Xander at least that hard when she came in." Was the answer.
"Yeah Gman, 'cause getting all the blood off the books would have been a nightmare." Harris the younger was looking at the broken table and wondering how far through his body the dark haired slayers fist would have gone if she had hit him that hard. "Well, at least she kept the flowers."
The whole gang was in the room now, including Wesley, who, having decided he needed to know more about the group dynamics before he could take his rightful place as leader, was standing quietly in the upper level absorbing everything. Oz was comforting his girlfriend, and looking at Xander.
There is a 'Far Side' cartoon that shows how to tell a dogs mood by its expression. All the expressions are identical regardless of whether the animal is cheerful or suicidal. Xander, having been around the werewolf for a while now, knew the reality behind the joke.
"Xander, what happened?" Buffy asked. The room turned to her; it was bizarre for her to ask a question, since that implied thinking before attacking. Thinking had never been the blonde's major strength, partly because it made her head hurt, so she avoided doing it whenever possible. Which was nearly always.
"A few nights ago I saved Faith's life and she took me to her place as a reward. I sent her some flowers and card to say 'thanks.'"
"Yes Buffy, Faith stormed in here demanding an explanation, and it became rather tense after that." The librarian explained.
Buffy looked at the shattered table, the crying red head, and the MAJORLY ticked off cheerleader and considered whether her watcher had outdone himself in the understatement department.
"Ok." Her deep thinking quota for the month used up, the elder slayer walked out of the library to get a drink.
Faith's hotel room, later that night.
This time she had decided to keep him around afterwards to get an explanation. They had gone on patrol together after meeting at the Bronze, and she had dragged him back to her place afterwards. The simple fact that a good prosecutor could have charged her with rape for either of the two times she had used him for sex never seemed to occur to her.
Although it did to Xander, it was one more thing about her to concern him. The others were still angry with him after this morning, which was at least consistent.
Cordy never had and probably never would forgive him for the 'clothes fluke' thing, which was understandable because he would never forgive himself for it either. His having sex with Faith was one more thing for her to be angry about, so she was.
Giles was bemused by the whole situation, but not actually getting involved with it. Which, from Xander's soldier possession memories, was a very bad attitude for a small unit leader to take. A NCO's primary responsibility, arguably, is to keep personal frictions to a minimum so the individuals under him function AS A UNIT. A sergeant who just stood back and watched while his squad self-destructed would be a private before long or the whole platoon would be so many corpses. The slayerettes being untrained volunteers only made the team building the Englishman was ignoring more important.
Willow was angry and hurt at him for sleeping with Faith. Normally a crying Willow would have him holding her and comforting her, but his oldest friend had chosen Oz for that role over him. Had, in fact, deliberately moved away from him in her effort to secure her relationship with Oz. Which he understood, logically. But now she was angry with him for having a sex life that didn't involve her, and for pointing out that she was pushing him out of her life.
Oz was supporting Willow. Having accepted her back, he was loyal to her. Whatever else he might be feeling was hidden behind his emotionless mask.
"So, Xman, ya never bragged to anyone about bagging the slayer? Kinda weird of ya, being a guy and all." She was more talkative and less closed off than usual tonight. Nearly staking the deputy mayor, combined with drinking half a bottle of cheap vodka in one swallow, was probably why he was here talking to her instead of outside holding his trousers.
"I didn't brag about saving all their ungrateful lives that night either. Which means I indirectly saved the world, no offence but I think that's almost as important as what we did that night." Xander explained. She was nowhere near as hammered as a normal girl who had drunk that much would be, but it took a second for her to speak again anyway.
"How'd that happen?" The slayer was finally over her automatic hostility and suspicion, at least far enough over it to be willing to listen instead of just yell. The younger slayer did not respond well to the unexpected, too many of the unexpected things in her life had been bad.
While the dark haired man told her the story of all the other things that had happened that night she listened and thought. She had never had a friend, not really, and had no idea how to handle the idea. She would give the boy next to her a chance to live up to his words. She decided to do something nice and safe as a 'lets be friends' exercise.
"Xman, how about we patrol early tommorrow, then go to the Bronze and pick up a girl for a threeway?" Some people would have suggested going out for dinner, and seriously, for Faith this was the equivalent. She saw him smile at her and hugged closer. It was the first time she had actually lay next to a guy after, and the extra body heat was a surprise. A nice surprise.
Perhaps there would be other nice surprises too.
Chapter 2
The sound of shots being fired in the Sunnydale night triggered instant alertness in the patrolling pair. Xander had been thinking about the shooting lessons Wesley had been giving him and the possible uses for that training, Faith was scanning for vampires, demons, or Microsoft salesmen. Something about Bill Gates and his firm triggered alarms in her, that was all. It was probably nothing.
As they sprinted across to where the shooting was coming from, the dark haired boy tentatively identified the sound as a 9mm, presumably a cop sentenced to the night shift for some infraction. Some really terrible breaking of the rules, like asking why with so many deaths from 'gangs on PCP', no gang member had ever been arrested. There was no OFFICAL death penalty for asking those questions.
Not that it mattered to someone like the man in the alley, backed up against his damaged patrol car, popping off shots at the advancing vampires. Impacting into the wall had smashed the car ? Sunnydale police driver training being as bad as everything else ? and the boot had popped open. The Zeppo saw the standard issue shotgun in its holder, forgotten by the panicked rookie, and grabbed it. Time to see if the junior Watcher's shooting lessons had achieved anything.
Xander had decided, after finding himself even more on the outside than previously after the 'Faith and the roses' incident, to try to bring the outsiders of the groups inside. Wesley was as much an outsider as Faith, and presumably beneath the 'useless prat' persona was something of value or he would never have been sent here.
It turned out one reason for the Englishman's insecure arrogance was that he had gained top marks at things that either were in no short supply at the council, like research, or were considered useless, such as shooting. And he was a natural with any kind of ranged weapon, anything that didn't involve hand to hand fighting. Since only crossbows were considered useful in any way, and they were too slow to reload to be VERY useful, no one cared about that skill.
"What are you freaks?" The apparently doomed cop shouted at the ridge headed things coming at him, totally disregarding the bullet hits to the torso they were suffering. In fact, the principle reason he had lasted this long was the fact that they HAD ignored him, finishing off the kill whose scream had caused him to drive into the alley in the first place.
BOOM came the sound of a shotgun firing, and a vampire lost its lower leg from a hit to the kneecap. The lost limb part dusted and the vamp fell to the ground screaming and holding the stump. There was a Chunk-chunk sound as the pump action was worked, then BOOM, the next went down. The cop watched his attackers turn to face the new threat, and he reloaded his pistol automatically. Someone had his shotgun; an Ithaca 37 with 8 rounds loaded, and was making good use of it.
Faith was impressed by what she was seeing, 'so 21 century weapons are not useless after all', was one thought. Another was to stay out of the way and observe, which is how she noticed a demon and some vampires dropping through a manhole cover at the far end of the alley. The cop was kicking himself for letting the situation develop as it had, wrecking the car, jumping out and running forward rather than stop, think, and do something intelligent.
Harris the younger was feeling the exhilaration of the vindicated. After kneecapping the vamps he had three rounds left, and went back to the car for the spare ammo while Faith staked the cripples. There was a small pack with spare ammunition, of which Officer Berkowitz had brought plenty, being justifiably nervous about the transfer to night shift. Walking over to the cop, who was clearly in over his head and frozen with fear, he asked for the others name.
"Officer Seymour Berkowitz" was the reply. Xander was anxious to be after the rest of the vamps, and handed the ammo bag and shotgun. The bag was heavy; he would let this guy be his pack mule.
"Reload that, when I say 'feed me' hand me a loaded weapon, give me your pistol, and KEEP UP!" The Soldier boy memories might have played a role in what happened that night, or perhaps it was just that the doughnut boy had real skills and a burning desire to not be ignored any more. Then again, Faith was now a close friend, which was ego boosting if exhausting. In any case he headed down the alley to the open manhole, shone the torch he had also taken off Berkowitz into it, and climbed down. "Faith, we have to finish this."
Two quick shots dropped the vamps that had hung back to ambush anyone attempting what Xander was doing. Then he stepped up and, while still well out of grabbing distance, fired a double tap into each blood suckers head. The hollow points blew out the back of the head with the first shot, then severed the neck with the second as the whole lower skull came apart. The SPD officer finished climbing down the ladder in time to see them dust.
"Next time, kneecaps, then head shots, huh?" The puffing cop said. He had been wearing his Kevlar flackvest under his shirt all night, he was carrying a heavy load, and he was trying to keep up with everything that was happening. It was a strain.
"Kneecaps then head shots." Xander confirmed. DAMN it felt good to be doing something useful for a change! He was seriously hyper by now, and walked quickly away from the ladder towards the sounds of running ahead. "Faith, I'll take point until we run out of ammo, you watch our backs."
A warehouse a mile away.
The people kidnapped this and the previous night for the ceremony were bewildered and only just beginning to feel some hope. The whoever they were had gone out in force, leaving only two guards to watch the cage they were in, and a much smaller group had come back. Now there were frantic phone calls being made, and more were arriving from elsewhere. As they arrived they tried to organize themselves. But it was hard to hold a conversation with the sounds coming closer.
It was the sound of shooting, and screams. Normally that would have frightened them even more, but anything that made these creatures afraid might be good for them, and could certainly be no worse. The sacrifices were referred to only as that, to their faces. The prospect of your immanent execution focuses the mind wonderfully, as someone once said.
The Tunnel
"Feed me Seymour." The shotgun was slapped into his hand and the Glock taken for reloading. There were side passages down here, and Xander was following the memory of his Military Operations in Urban Terrain, or MOUT, training. 'Make sure to leave no living enemy behind you, clear every room you pass' being particularly memorable. BOOM and a door blew open, chunk-chunk BOOM and a Mohra demon lost a leg, spraying luminous green blood over the three humans. It waved a sword from the floor as the next shot went to the face, smashing the red jewel in its head and causing it to simply disappear in a flash.
The Mohra demon, like many that would die this night, was not actually part of the ceremony to raise Lothuk; it was just here on holiday to enjoy the hellmouth vibe. There was actually quite a tourist trade in demons just visiting a place where they could do essentially anything they wanted without repercussions, well, as long as they avoided the slayer anyway. A lot of them lived, and now were dying, down here. Seeing it was a dead end, the Zeppo turned and backed away into the main tunnel, as Officer Berkowitz looked back at the vanishing goop that was all that was left of a reasoning being.
"Boy sure looks like plant food to me." Was his comment. All the 'Feed me Seymour, Feed Me' statements had been getting to him, and for all he knew this maniac might never have even seen 'Little Shop of Horrors'. At least that green stuff was disappearing, he thought to himself, like Xander and Faith not having the faintest clue what they had just killed or the effect of it's blood soaking into their systems.
BOOM and an unidentified demon died. Chunk-Chunk and a fresh round was chambered.
"Lost his head completely, poor chap." Faith said in her best ? not very good - English accent. She sensed something and pointed to a ladder heading up, something escaping. BOOM, chunk-chunk, thump, as it fell to the ground. Then another BOOM, as its head was smashed but it still moved, maybe a twitching corpse, maybe recovering. Chunk- chunk BOOM, and the head was missing. If it wasn't dead now it certainly was not going to be up to interfering with them tonight.
"Feed me!" The Glock was handed over and the shotgun replaced it in the policeman's hand.
"That's the last loaded mag. We either have to stop while I load the empties or stick to the shotgun, and we only have 12 rounds left for that." Berkowitz had been green as grass when he started asking uncomfortable questions about the way things worked in this town. But he did know the death rate of officers on the night shift, so when he was assigned to a SOLO patrol car he responded by purchasing spare magazines, extra ammo for both weapons, and this pack to keep it all in. He had a full box of 9mm Parabellum ammunition for the 5 empty magazines, but loading them would take time.
Time that the man he was following clearly did not intend to let whoever or whatever they were killing have. Seymour fed ammunition into the now very hot shotgun, noticing the girl take a sword in each hand as he did so. Exactly how he would explain all this to the review board in the morning was not a question he wanted to even think about.
The Sacrifices cage.
Linda Kolchak was possibly the only individual here who actually knew what she was dealing with, or, more accurately, what she was being dealt with by. Having arrived here early for college next year, she was working and finishing off her high school studies by correspondence. Or that was the plan up to the point the vampires had grabbed her and taken her to this awful place.
The sound of shots and screaming came closer, but there was no sound of sirens that would indicate it was a police operation. Sunnydale police were, by and large, noticeable for their highly refined instinct of self-preservation, leading them to drive at high speed, sirens blaring, anywhere BUT to the sounds of screaming and dying.
Uncle Carl had chased things like this as a reporter for INS, and he had told her about it. But, and it was a huge but, the Chicago, Seattle and Las Vegas police had always at least TRIED to fight. They had routinely failed to achieve much, and Carl Kolchak's descriptions of the Chicago TAC squad being tossed around stayed with her to this day, but they never actively chickened out like this bunch. Maybe she should forget the journalism course and take the cadetship Tony Vincenzo was offering in its place.
A cadetship with the Independent New Service under her Uncle's old editor sounded pretty good right now. Rather like the sound of the pistol shots that seemed to be directly under her, as the sound came out of the manhole in the floor in the middle of the room. The demons were standing well back from it, wary. The shooting stopped, and what might have been 'feed me Seymour', followed by 'one, two, three', and a slim, dark haired girl FLEW up out of the hole, landing, sword in hand a foot or so away.
The tunnel, directly under the warehouse.
Officer Seymour Berkowitz was as tired as he had ever been in his life, had ached all over, but he was also feeling good. Whatever they had been fighting were clearly living by killing people, as the remains of their meals that he had been force to step over repeatedly to get here attested. He had originally signed up to pay for his writing habit anyway, unpublished author being a good way to starve otherwise. He really hadn't intended it as a career, and if he was thrown out after this, who cared?
And so he stood looking up through the hole into the brightness, hands still locked together with the other mans the way they had been when the woman had been standing on them while they prepared to toss her up into the light. Now they had to go up, and he would be going last, since he was unarmed except for his baton.
The warehouse
Faith had been in the unusual and frustrating position of bystander for the action so far, and her frustration was coming out now. Arms, legs, and tentacles were sliced off at a rapid rate. She was trying, and succeeding, in keeping them far enough away from the manhole for Xander to come through without being attacked while helpless. She took a head off, then turned and swung hard, slicing from above the right shoulder to below the side of the ribcage of a green thing with scales. It fell in two pieces in opposite directions, and the surviving bad guys started running.
Faith's motel room, the next night
Faith was lying warm and comfortable next to her friend and fuckbudy, Xander Harris. Having trustworthy friends was unknown to her until him, he was her first. It was also nice to have someone she could be open with, be herself with, and not be condemned for it. Outing herself as bisexual was not as big a deal as it might have been for others, but still a big deal and he handled it well.
Buffy had been kind of skittish when she was told, and Willow had been, well intrigued was one way of phrasing it. After the Vamp Willow incident Faith knew why, even if the red head was in denial to some degree. If wolfboy ever left the scene though, the dark slayer definitely was planing to move in on his territory. Hey, the girl had been after Xander before now, it was the perfect deal.
So the Boston slayer lay and thought, of life, love and friendship. Of whether she was in love with Xander Harris, or simply a close friend with sex privileges. Like every time she thought about it, or for that matter the time she had mentioned it to the man next to her, it was decided it didn't matter. She would rather have him than any other man, he always referred girls interested in him to her, explaining she handled his sex life. Enough had actually done that for her to be, this very night, enjoying the feeling of a woman next to her. She might have fucked the girl before meeting Xander, but she would never have considered SLEEPING with her.
Certainly not for the third time this week, which this was.
"I had to become Xman's friend before I got a girlfriend, how's that for odd?"
Los Angles branch of the Independent New Service, Editor's Office, later that month.
"Are you sure you are Carl's niece, not a reincarnation of him or something?" The old man asked. He had been middle aged when her uncle had encountered his first Vampire in Vegas, and age had not improved his temper.
"What do you mean Mr. Vincenzo?" Seymour Berkowitz asked. Being officially credited with saving the 'terrorist hostages' had prevented him from suffering a more severe fate than unemployment. His writing interests and photographic skills made him a useful news cameraman. Besides, Linda had insisted on it as part of her taking up the cadet reporter position.
"Little miss innocent here goes to a small town to do some waitressing before attending college. Instead she gets involved in a terrorist incident that both of you insist was really a demonic ceremony." His blood pressure was up again, he was going red in the face. Well, he had hired a Kolchak, what else had he expected? "And you get saved by the boy wonder here with the aid of no-one, if you believe the official report, two black operations specialists if you believe the rumors, or a VAMPIRE SLAYER and a man POSSESSED BY A HYENA if I believe you two."
"Actually I think the soldier possession was probably more important to the outcome Tony." Linda blithely added.
"OK, ENOUGH, I GET THE PICTURE." Taking time to calm himself down, the editor stepped back and took a few deep breaths. "I have a first assignment for you, something nice and safe, a piece we can sell as a 'quiet, old fashioned Americana' story."
"What is it, boss?" The new photographer said. He had expected something like this, a nice easy piece to get them started. Well, he had the rest of his life to get juicier pieces.
"You are going to cover the Sunnydale High School Class of 1999 Graduation Ceremony."
END PART 1