Stauffenberg's Cat

Summary: In the quiet hours of the night before Faith's charge against the First, there's a bit of a chat between Xander and Faith.

Characters: Xander, Faith

Story Notes: Filler for the episode 'Touched'. Just another one of those takes on what might've transpired if Xander and Faith had screen time together in that episode.

Author's Note: Ten Mara, thank you. Here be the other normal among the abnormal. And thank you, nemogravis. Keep the voices talking!

Rating: R for language

Disclaimer: The characters recognised herein as existing in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' are indeed characters from said show. No ownership is claimed over them. The quantum physics paradox of 'Schroedinger's cat' was put forth by Erwin Schroedinger in 1935. No cat, alive and dead, was harmed in this story's mangled postulate of the poor cat's fate.

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XxX

The stars in the sky twinkled and shimmered, far enough away that it didn't matter that he had no depth perception. He sat down on the lawn bench, carefully tilted his head back, and focused on one star, shining white; light years away, spinning on its axis as surface gases burned, a large, large star, probably ten times as large as the sun. The starlight he was seeing might even be older than a thousand years. In the light of such mass and distance of time, a small group of humans on a planet called Earth, fighting against the First Evil, was about as insignificant as an ant crushed underfoot by marching soldiers.

Xander cringed. The painkillers he'd just swallowed must really be the good stuff. He didn't think he could ever get that pretentiously metaphorical without some really fine juice. He wrapped his arms around himself. It was quite chilly out here. It had been really stuffy indoors.

He'd extricated himself from Anya's sleeping embrace after the one-side of the face headache had him grabbing for his prescription. Then the headache and the need to just be alone for a while had led him to sneak out of the kitchen. He smiled at the buzz that he could still feel. The sex hadn't been spectacular or anything, really; it was just the fact that it had happened. It wasn't pity sex either. Anya didn't do pity sex. Nor would she mince words about the quality of sex. More importantly, he had been up to it.

Not that a lost eye should have gotten in the way of anything. What was one lost eye, after all? When you have two, clearly one's the one you need and the other is a spare.

But how ridiculous was it that after having survived vampires, beasts of varying hairiness, sliminess, and ickness, and not to mention multiple opportunities to be maimed or killed by his own stupidity, Xander should lose an eye? An eye, of all things? To an evil preacher minion of the First Evil. Why the eye? Why didn't the preacher just kill him?

Which wasn't to suggest that he was unhappy to be alive. One can be disfigured but breathing, grateful that four limbs and a head remain attached. There was nothing for him to weep for. Adjustments could be made. He didn't have to look into a mirror to shave - with the modern electric razor, going by feel is good enough. Or he could grow a beard. He knew he had what it took for a nice, manly beard.

He resisted the urge to rub the area around his wounded eye. Wait, what the crap was he thinking? What eye? There was a wound. No eye. Just a wound. No more eye. From this time henceforth, Xander would have to remember to never use the plural again when he talked about his eye. No 's'. Just eye.

The garden shrubs and patio fixtures cast strange shadows in the dark, and he wasn't sure what was really there, and what was strange because his brain was still trying to get used to processing visual data input from only the right eye. His doctor had assured him that the brain would learn to compensate very quickly. What a comfort.

It didn't matter when he was looking at stars. They were just hundreds of little pinpoints of light, strewn against a flat, dark background of two-dimensional space. A dazzling, blinking tapestry. He latched onto a star that was even brighter than the white one earlier. When he and Jesse were 14, Jesse had proposed a full-proof method for scoring a quick and easy shot at necking a girl: point the stars out to her, preferably those stars right over the top of her head. She would tilt her face up and her neck would be sweetly stretched and exposed. Zoom in and kiss.

To a couple of fourteen-year-olds it had seemed like the most incredible idea ever put forth by Man. He wondered, if Jesse had lived, would Jesse have ever actually tried that on a girl and scored? Xander considered the odds of who might have lost his virginity first. Would they have bragged to each other about it? He was pretty sure that nothing Jesse might've had would have been as astounding as Xander's first. Because really, if there was going to be any virginity lost, what better way than to lose it to Faith? Of course that first time would have been really, really, really perfect if the conclusion had been less ... abrupt, but no need to get into details.

Thinking about Jesse reminded him that he'd meant to swing by Jesse's place and check that his parents had left. Xander's own parents had instinctively understood a need to go visit and stay with Uncle Rory in wherever it was that Uncle Rory had landed in Nevada, but Jesse's parents ... he was worried that they wouldn't want to leave. They believed that Jesse was still alive, that Jesse might come home one day. They hadn't gone on vacation anywhere in years because they never wanted Jesse to come home to an empty house. After all these years, it still tore him to continue the lie to Jesse's parents.

Well, Xander could drive out to Jesse's tomorrow morning; as good a time as any to train himself to drive in mono-vision. He scanned the rest of the sky, searching for the wispy tendrils of the Milky Way - or at least, any congregating splatter of stars worthy of such a name.

He caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone had come out into the garden - at 3.00 in the morning. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He shouldn't be too disappointed; there really was very little hope of getting any privacy. The someone spotted him sitting on the bench and stopped, standing stock-still. He could make out the outline of a slim female figure, with long dark hair ... he groaned inwardly. Not Kennedy. Anyone but Kennedy.

He'd saved her life. In doing so, he had been placed within arm's reach of Caleb the Evil Minion of the First. Which led to permanent alteration to his features and senses. Now, he wasn't trying to blame anyone and he didn't want to blame anyone. Willow had told him how grateful Kennedy was, but Kennedy hadn't gone to the hospital to visit. He wasn't trying to fish for sympathy, and he'd hate more than anything to have to deal with pity, and not that any one thing had to do with the other ... but Kennedy hadn't been at the hospital at all. He couldn't decide how he felt about that.

He did know that he didn't feel like talking. Not to her, not to Giles, not to Willow. He was putting the wise-cracking 'no left eye - who needs a left eye?' Xander on hiatus for the rest of the night. He wanted time to just be himself.

The girl finally moved again, towards him. Speak of the devil - that wasn't Kennedy. That was Faith. He shouldn't have mistaken the two. Faith was all soft curves and glorious hair and sassy grooves, while Kennedy was, well, Kennedy was no Faith.

He watched Faith's approach. When she got close enough, she nodded a greeting and said, "Hey, Xander."

He replied with a noncommittal grunt.

"What are you doing out here?" Faith asked conversationally.

Xander thought the answer - 'moping and feeling sorry for myself' - was quite obvious, but no one had ever accused Faith of being highly perceptive. Aloud he answered, "Just looking at the stars. Look. Right over us."

She looked. And well, well, what do you know? Jesse had been on to something. Pity Xander had never tried this with Anya.

Faith was still showing off her neck, but Xander found himself being drawn back to the twinkling sky. All those patrols beneath the stars, and he could never remember ever having actually looked up at them before like this. He had never appreciated the celestial vision of heavens bequeathed. So many nights and yet he never once raised his sight above him in humble awe.

Oh no. He was not going to step on that sappy remorse parade. He'd never realized he was even capable of that level of sap.

Faith had had enough of the sky. She was looking at him, with her head cocked to one side. She waved her right hand vaguely in the direction of his face. "Isn't it too soon to be wearing that eye-patch? I'm no doctor, but that really looks like it should hurt."

"Yeah, well, it's ... raw. It's still raw. Hurts like hell actually. But that's why the pharmaceutical industry invented painkillers." He resisted, yet again, the urge to rub the skin around the patch. "Anyway, it's like Halloween, you know? You wear an eye-patch as a costume but then the evening ends and you take it off and you're all you again. You go back to what you were. It was all just pretend and - "

If he couldn't rub the area that was bothering him, then he'd do a compensatory rub of his cheek. So he did, roughly, and a flare of pain shot straight up into his skull. He bit down on the hiss; chose to be glad instead that the pain had shut him up. He didn't know what he was trying to say to Faith anyway. Or why he should be saying anything to Faith.

He wasn't sure how long it was before the pain subsided enough that he could move his head. Faith was sitting on a lawn seat that she must have dragged over next to his bench. He hadn't been aware when she'd done that. She was gazing stolidly up at the stars, doing a fairly decent job of ignoring him. He appreciated that.

"So what are you doing out here?" he asked, sparking off conversation since it was clear she was staying. She was out here, not inside, not upstairs with Principal Robin Wood. Xander couldn't quite suppress the vindictive smirk - it didn't matter how long and loud the sex was, Wood wasn't getting the Faith cuddle either. He had nothing against the guy; hell, Wood saved his life when the most recent Xander/demon date went predictably wrong, but there was the matter of post-coitus honor to consider here.

Thankfully Faith didn't notice his smirking. She said, "I need the fresh air. It's ripe in there!" She shook herself, as though that would help rid the grime. "What I really wanted was a shower, but I walked into the bathroom and there's a girl sleeping in the bathtub. Did you know that? There's a girl - sleeping in the bathtub."

"That's Kimberly. She's a bit of a loner. Needs her own space. Says she likes that the tub kinda cradles her. And besides, it means she's always first to shower every morning."

"Fuck that. How crazy do you have to be to sleep in the bathtub?"

"She stays warm. She got a comforter out of a closet somewhere and she always makes sure the tub's dry before she spreads it. She pulls the curtain, and there's that little bit of privacy. See, the question you have to ask is: how obsessed do you have to be about your morning shower?"

Faith was appropriately skeptical. "She's that obsessed?"

"We've got all kinds," Xander proclaimed solemnly.

"Come on. That's the best bathroom in the house. That's the one everyone uses. There will be people needing to pee."

"Kimberly says she doesn't mind people coming and going, so long as they flush." Faith made a face, and he quickly raised his hands, palms out. "Hey, not me. I'd rather hold. I've always been good at holding."

"And there's always the garden."

Xander grinned. "Always the garden," he concurred.

"It's insane. I just got out of the state penitentiary and I'm looking at this set-up you guys have here and I can't ... I fuckin' can't believe it. This is insane."

"And not to mention a violation of many a fire safety code." He caught her look. "What? I'm in construction. I gotta know these things." Well, he had been in construction. He didn't know what was going to happen for him now.

"Yeah, Willow told me. I never - " She stopped and shrugged off whatever it was she'd meant to say. What she said instead was rather inane. "Construction - that's hard work."

He could go with it, though. "That it is, for us mere mortals. Piece of cake for a Slayer. Did Willow tell you? Buffy worked construction for half a day. Heavy labor."

Faith laughed. "Seriously? Fuckin'-A. What happened? Guys at the site couldn't stand to see a woman outpace them?"

"Oh, more of a demon thing. Correction: demons. They showed up, there was slayage, broken beams, damaged infrastructure, on-the-job injuries, insurance claims to the wazoo, very vocal employer recriminations and near-unemployment," he pointed at himself, "And that overall painful acknowledging that getting Buffy a job where I was working was a bad, bad idea."

"Hell, I could have painted that scene for you."

"Look, some bad ideas you only know are going to be bad ideas after they've been given the chance to prove to be bad ideas."

"What'd she need the job for anyway?"

Xander hesitated. He wasn't certain how much Faith knew. "She had Dawn to support."

Faith reacted like she'd been punched. She raised her hands to her face, and behind fingers pressed to her lips, muttered, "Yeah. Fuck, yeah, I should have seen that."

The conversation died right there, and Xander didn't feel awkward about it at all. In fact, here was another situation where he wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel. Faith: formerly the poster child Slayer Gone Bad, who recently escaped from jail so that she could offer pivotal Slayer assistance to Angel and co. in L.A.. Faith, now with them here in Sunnydale to help in the fight against the First. Faith: escaped felon trying to save the world. And right now she was keeping him company in the dead quiet of the night - just sitting by him, when three, no four years ago she'd been a hair's breath away from taking his life.

He knew she would have. She'd certainly gone on to prove that she was more than capable of cold-blooded murder. Personally, he suspected that she'd actually held back with him - at full Slayer strength she should have been able to kill him quick and easy. So she'd either been toying with him, drawing out the moment of strangulation, or some small part of her conscience was still over-riding central command. It used to be that he'd quietly nursed the hope that it was the latter; it was the kind of hope that let him think she might not have really killed him. That she would have stopped in time, of her own volition. It offered a small bit of comfort: that he would have still survived even if Angel hadn't shown up to save the day.

Now that he thought about it again - after a long time of not thinking about it all - he was sure that Faith had to have been getting off on power: she had power over his life, and she could take her sweet time to snuff him out.

Either the distance of time had helped him become very clinical about the matter, or the painkillers were really, really potent stuff.

There were no crickets, he realized suddenly. No night chirping sounds, no soft rustling conjured by gentle breeze in the leaves. The night's quiet was absolute.

"Hey, Xander," Faith began. She seemed reluctant about whatever it was she wanted to say, and she didn't seem to know what to do with her hands. "That night when you came over - when you came over to my motel room, and..."

He watched her struggle to find the right words. Interesting: so Faith had been thinking about that night too. He wouldn't have thought that she'd have even been bothered to remember what had happened. She was taking far too long to get the words out though, and Xander couldn't help but sigh inwardly. If her intention was to seek forgiveness - Willow had mentioned in passing that Faith was on some redemption drive: turned over a new leaf, was trying to be a better person, was gonna make up for all she'd done wrong, whatever - then surely she could do better than this. She'd been locked up in a penitentiary for three years; time not spent being penitent could have gone into figuring out the best way to say she was sorry.

All the same, Xander had to admit that there was some degree of perverse satisfaction in watching Faith squirm.

"It shouldn't have happened," she managed, finally, rushing the words out in a gush.

"Hey, bygones be bygones," he replied. "And there was good. Taught me that sexual asphyxiation is not my thing. Totally not my thing. You won't ever catch me trying that at home. Anything else goes, but there is where the line will be drawn."

She stared at him, her expression unreadable, before breaking eye contact and looking off to the side. He thought that he'd be pleased with himself for the quick glib comeback; instead he felt like he should have perhaps canned the quips. It couldn't have been easy for Faith to work herself up to that apology, such as it were. But damn it, she had done wrong to him. Let her work for this.

She finished without looking at him, keeping her gaze fixed on some distant shrubs. "I was glad to see that you were okay. Afterward. After what happened."

Xander thought about pointing out to her that there couldn't have been any way for him to be okay after she'd almost crushed his windpipe and caused him more undue humiliation than anything else ever had up to that point in his life, but he decided that he couldn't really be bothered. He didn't believe her, anyway. The Faith then wouldn't have cared less if he had been rendered a vegetable after she cut the air circulation from his brain. But the Faith now probably would, and he should be magnanimous about it.

He didn't need to play too nicely, though. "Look, forget it. I was still new at it then. I've had better since."

There was, he saw, the barest perceptible flinch. He sighed and lowered his head, gently rubbing his right temple. Without looking up, he said, "Seriously, just forget it. I'd kinda forgotten about it, actually."

He heard her draw in a breath like she might want to say something else, but she didn't. He hoped she'd go away now. There wasn't anything more. That was all she was going to get tonight, and that was considerably good enough. He had not forgotten about it, of course not, but he wasn't spending every waking minute being haunted by it either. In the larger scheme of things, Faith had hardly been the only person to have ever tried to kill him; hell, Anya was still fond of painting many a pretty disembowelment picture of him for him, cathartic break-up sex notwithstanding. Anyway, if he really wanted to pick the ultimate traumatized-to-the-brink-of-therapy murder attempt he figured Willow should top the list of attempters based purely on sheer magnitude of apocalyptic ambition. Willow had even drawn blood. Well, so had Caleb, and Caleb had done the most physical damage of all, but Willow's attack on him had torn at the very essence of what their friendship had been. No matter what he said out loud, or how he felt about Willow now, or even the fact that he had forgiven Willow and to a certain extent understood her, the hurt Willow had inflicted would always cast a shadow on their relationship.

Faith shifted in her seat. "Hey." She waited until he raised his head and met her eyes. "I also wanted to say that I'm glad that you're with us in this. I'm glad you're sticking around."

Xander blinked a couple of times, not quite able to figure out what Faith was onto now.

"You're a good man to have in a fight," she said without any trace of sarcasm.

He got it. This must be Faith's idea of leadership and mustering up the ground crew. Still, it was nice to have someone actually say all that to him. He didn't want to be babied and pampered, but he was definitely glad to be told that he still mattered in some way. Even if the person saying so were Faith, and even though he was pretty sure there wasn't actually going to be any significant contribution that he'd be allowed to do now. It would only be a matter of time before someone told him to his face to go sit in the invalid corner somewhere and not get in the way of the real fighters.

Faith could have wrapped up with that, but she seemed intent to keep picking at whatever point she was trying to make. "Especially after what happened with Buffy, and then all that stuff Spike was saying just now. I know we have this history - "

"History," he interrupted bitterly. Such history they had, indeed. But he wasn't going to spend the rest of this night revisiting that time. She could work her redemption out on her own. He'd moved on; she could catch up if she wanted to. He veered off on a different tangent. "If we're gonna talk history, then what I'd like to do is associate with a historical figure. I name Stauffenberg."

Faith took a while to decide that okay, she'd bite. "Who?"

"Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. He was one of Hitler's right hand men, but he realized that what Hitler was doing was wrong and someone had to stop Hitler before the war spiraled further out of control. So Stauffenberg planted a bomb to kill Hitler but the bomb didn't kill him. Didn't kill Hitler. Stauffenberg had tried and failed. Hitler had him executed for treason."

"Wow. I didn't know about that. They teach you that shit in school?"

He scratched his chin and affected an air of nonchalance. "I don't know. I watched it on the History Channel."

Faith seemed suitably impressed. Then she frowned. "Hold on a minute. Stauf what? Stauffenberg? Wasn't he that German guy with the cat?"

Xander squinted at her with his one eye. "What?"

"German scientist. Did something with a cat in a box."

"Oh. No, no, that's Schroedinger. 'Schroedinger's cat'."

"There was something about a box."

"Yeah, a cat, a box and it was all about ... 'Something Physics'."

"And the cat's in the box."

"Right. If the box is closed and cat's in the box and you don't open the box, then all you'd know is that maybe the cat's dead or maybe the cat's alive."

"It was 'and'. The cat's dead and alive," Faith corrected.

Xander nodded and amended: "And." That was the bit that never made sense to him. He remembered now that he'd wanted to ask Willow about it, but then it slipped his mind.

Faith smirked. "Got all that off Discovery Channel?"

"No," Xander retorted. "I actually took the classes and passed the exam ... of course I got it off Discovery. Where'd you get the shit?"

"My first cellmate in jail was a high school teacher. She taught Science on the outside. Sometimes she'd read textbooks out loud to keep herself occupied." Faith shook her head at the memory. "She was in for like ten years, about halfway through her sentence when I got in. Bitch planned to go back to teaching when she got out."

"High school teacher?"

"Yeah." Faith's disgust was evident. "A teacher. You know what she was in for?"

Xander thought it was fairly obvious that he wouldn't know, but he knew better than to interrupt a well-steamed up rant to crack a cheap answer.

"Child abuse. Neighbors turned her in. She was messing up her own daughter. Belting her, hitting her. Flaming her knuckles on the stove. Locking her in the closet till the girl screamed for mercy. Neighbors would hear her." Faith turned her face away. "I don't know if there's a god, but he's sure got a sense of humor. I give myself up, accept my sentence, and who do I get for a roommate? A mother who beat the shit out of her own kid."

That was awful. And Xander wasn't really surprised by what this little revelation hinted about her childhood. But he didn't know what he was supposed to say about it, either. Some of them weren't as lucky as others in their allotment of parents. Before his brain could stop him, he started grousing aloud.

"The thing about these parents who get caught is that they're doing it wrong. The best method in child discipline is the open palm surprise smack. The element of surprise is extremely important. The kid must never see it coming."

If he'd slurred the words, then he might've been forgiven for being drug-addled and stupid. And the fact of the matter was that Xander would very much like a drink - he'd been yearning for a drink or ten from the moment he arrived from the hospital and realized that in a houseful of scared girls he was going to have to put on a show of steadfastness - but there was nothing alcoholic left in the house. Faith grinned though, and Xander recognized that for probably the first time ever, they were both aware that they were on the same page in the big book of life's little bad jokes.

"Well," Faith began, with the full weight of wisdom to back her up. "That's true - you have to maximize impact. If the kid knows what's coming, then the kid might take evasive action. Not good enough. The kid will never learn nothing." She clapped her palms together and added thoughtfully, "So the open palm surprise smack: a tried and tested method."

"Works every time," Xander intoned.

"Hell yeah."

They both chuckled before lapsing into something that felt almost like companionable silence. He really did almost feel comfortable with her. Ironic, considering how they'd been dancing the skillful steps of conveniently avoiding each other without actually trying to avoid each other since her return to Sunnydale. As things went, he had nothing against the notion of giving her the benefit of the doubt and trusting that she'd turned over a new leaf. She was also Second Slayer to Buffy, and now de facto leader - he was fine with that too. He'd follow her lead since this fight with the First was not the kind of thing where you could be fussy about who your Generals were. But he and Faith were never friends. They might've been, but that last night in her motel room pretty much settled the matter. They were not friends.

Faith sat up straight, reacting to a sudden thought.

"That stuff you were talking about Stauffenberg - was that some kind of..." Faith trailed off, the fingers of one hand trying to pluck the word that she was searching for. "Some kind of analogy? Like you're saying Buffy was making bad decisions ... and there was Hitler, who was the Big Bad of leadership gone wrong?"

He spluttered. "Huh? What the hell? No! Analogy?" He batted the air in a futile effort ward off the atrocity Faith was suggesting. "I don't do analogies! God! No! I was talking about Stauffenberg having only one eye. He wore an eye-patch ... he lost one eye in some battle; I can't remember left or right eye. My memory's going all fuzzy-woozy on me. I was thinking Stauffenberg because he was a one-eyed fucker with an eye-patch."

"Oh. Right."

He didn't respond. He was preoccupied with trying to rid the blasphemous image that had popped up in his mind. Faith sat quietly for some time before suddenly flashing a grin and asking, "So ... did this Stauffenberg have a cat?"

Xander gave an exasperated sigh but that grin was infectious. And the blasphemous image was safely dispelled. "I don't know. The historians kinda overlooked that."

"That's an important piece of personal history to overlook."

"Yeah. Too bad, huh. It might have given us something more on the kind of guy he was. Did Stauffenberg have a cat? Did he take proper care of his cat? Or was Stauffenberg secretly a dog person? With bells to go with the dog food?"

"I'm all for cats," Faith declared, completely missing Xander's allusion to the other famous animal-using scientific experiment. Pity. Xander thought that was one of the smarter pieces of wit he'd ever come up with. Faith stated her case for cat love: "They're not clingy. They've got dignity."

Xander shrugged. Her partiality to cats didn't surprise him in the slightest. He himself was all for the loyal companionship of the dog, not to mention the whole underdog philosophy that he was sure had helped them win against many a Big Bad before this. There was never such a thing as keeping a good dog down, either.

Faith was still pondering. "What about that Schroedinger guy? Did he feed the cat? I used to wonder."

"The cat wasn't supposed to last the hour, anyway," Xander reminded her. "There was this trigger that'd release cyanide gas that'd kill the cat at the end of the hour."

"You gotta at least feed the cat."

"Well, too bad. You can't open the box. If you're gonna feed the cat you have to open the box and that'll just defeat the whole purpose of - whatever the hell he was doing. Look, I don't think hunger was ever an issue." He placed very strong emphasis on his next sentence. "The cat was in a box with cyanide gas."

Faith waved such a petty concern away and pressed on about a more pertinent matter. "Tell me, how the hell was the cat alive and dead at the same time?"

"You were the one sharing a cell with a science teacher."

"I wasn't talking to that woman. She should feel lucky I never did anything to her - she never shut up."

Xander reflected on it. "It might have been some kind of ... metaphor."

"A metaphor."

"Yeah. It tells you something."

"It's a damn science experiment. It's supposed to tell you something."

"But it wasn't literal, you know."

"What? He was teaching the cat to read too?"

After careful contemplation of Faith's face and body language, Xander reached the conclusion that that wasn't Faith delivering a one-liner. Which was also a pity, because as far as one-liners went, that one was sheer genius. Then Faith raised another issue.

"And why the cat?" She scowled. "What'd the cat ever do to him?"

Xander could give this an answering shot. "He was a scientist. You know how they can get all screwed up. I think scientists just don't have a proper grip on the right things in life. That's what makes them go evil."

"You think?"

Xander thought about the Initiative, how they tried to kill Buffy once they found out about her Slayer abilities. And of course there was no forgetting the things that were reportedly done to Oz.

"I have a theory," Xander said. "That too-smart people in general, and scientists in particular, have a greater propensity for evil than the rest of the ordinary population."

After all, look at Willow.

"You could be on to something," Faith replied. She glanced over her shoulder at the house, then looked at him pointedly. "Think maybe Anya's getting cold on that kitchen floor?"

"I gave her all the coats."

"I know. I couldn't find any when I was coming out here."

"Sorry about that. It is turning into a kind of a chilly night." Xander just felt suddenly tired. So very tired. The tranquilizing effects of the painkillers were finally taking hold. And the idea of cuddling up next to Anya - cold kitchen floor be damned - was like the best thing ever. He told Faith, "You should get some sleep, too. Big things tomorrow."

"Yeah." She looked him in the eye. "I'm really glad you're with us. What you did - you've got a lot of balls."

She was believably earnest. He wasn't hungry for accolades, but that was really the right nice thing to hear, no denying it. It almost helped him feel like he could get used to believing that being one eye out wasn't the worst thing that could happen.

"We'll get him, Xander. Caleb will pay."

Now, that was a promise to make the heart sing. He smiled at her and she smiled grimly back. He leaned forward in preparation to stand. Faith perched a little closer, ready to give him a helping hand, just in case. He got to his feet without swaying too much.

"Coming in?" he asked, as he started up the path to the kitchen door.

"In a minute." She put her hands on her hips and threw her head back to look up at the sky, and Xander was struck by how beautiful she was. How beautiful she still was. But of course - it wasn't like they were on a tenth year reunion. Despite their lifetime of hard experiences, they were both still so young.

It was a pity about their history. If there were no history, and if he weren't with Anya - weren't still hoping on some level that he would be with Anya - then he imagined that he wouldn't mind giving Wood a little bit of a contest for the Faith cuddles, on-coming Apocalypse be damned. He expected that she would break his heart anyway: she was out of his league, or she'd just use him and toss him aside, but when the woman was someone like Faith, the heartbreak might well be worth it.

"I never really looked at the stars," she said. "It's amazing how many there are." She lowered her gaze and saw him waiting. "Go on ahead. I'll be in in a minute." She tossed her hair and smiled a sly grin. "Besides, I gotta use the garden."

Xander laughed out loud. He spared one last glance up at the stars, and returned to the kitchen.

End