Title: Love Sanctioned
Author: Slaymesoftly
Rating: NC17 (eventually, the rest of them were)
Disclaimer: I have no idea why this idea never occurred to Joss, but it didn’t, so I’m borrowing his characters to make them happy.
AN: the fourth and last in the series that began with Loves Lost. Spike has moved to LA and tried to build a life that doesn’t include killing to eat. Faith has arrived in Sunnydale and the Mayor is on the move. Playing a bit fast and loose with canon timelines, as Faith’s watcher is arriving after Buffy’s birthday, rather than before – it just worked out better for this fic. I guess, basically, I’ve given the year a few more than the usual twelve months. LOL






Love Sanctioned

Chapter One

Buffy knocked Faith away and turned just in time to see Gwendolyn slip on the glove and hold it aloft triumphantly. When the watcher turned her smug smile on Faith and called her an idiot, the two slayers’ eyes met in sudden solidarity.

“Can you distract her?” Buffy whispered. With a quick nod, the other slayer ran into the building, drawing the false watcher’s fire and allowing Buffy time to pick up a large shard of glass and creep closer to the woman now using the Glove of Myhnegon to shoot lightning bolts at everyone within reach. Buffy sent the sharp glass spinning towards the evil ex-watcher, watching it slice through the woman’s arm just above the gauntlet. They all shielded their eyes as the lightning drawn by the glove pierced Gwendolyn’s chest and burned her to ash while they cowered away from the flames.

As Buffy carefully picked up the once-again-dormant gauntlet and handed it to Xander and Willow for disposal in the magical fire, she remembered Spike’s words when he’d told them there would be another Slayer and another watcher sent out – one that would likely be either crooked or incompetent. With a sigh, she gazed over at Faith who was still absorbing the fact that she had almost helped her new watcher become an all-powerful demon.

(I guess Spike called it – two out of three so far; incompetent can’t be far behind.)

When the gauntlet had been properly disposed of and Giles had smugly reported to the Council that Faith’s intended watcher had apparently been obsessed with power, he discovered that the woman had been fired some time ago. In spite of the vehement arguments from the two slayers that they be left alone for Giles to advise, Quentin Travers informed them coldly that a new watcher would be on the way within the day and to expect him with the week. He hung up while Buffy was still telling him how completely uninterested she was in having a new watcher.

Faith was abnormally subdued; her almost fatal mistake in trusting the woman she had thought was helping her fight the obviously evil and disloyal blond slayer and her fired watcher was causing her to keep her thoughts to herself. She was not unaccustomed to being on the wrong side of a decision, but this was the first time she had been fooled into helping someone evil and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Nor was she accustomed to being forgiven for her mistakes, as both Buffy and Giles seemed willing to do. She listened quietly as Buffy said, “He was right, wasn’t he, Giles?”

Knowing exactly to whom she was referring, the older man grimaced his agreement. “So it would seem,” he said, leaving no doubt about his reluctance to admit that Spike could be correct about anything. “However, in all fairness to the Council,” he ignored Buffy’s rolling eyes and Faith’s snort, “they did not send the harridan. She murdered Faith’s intended new watcher.”

“So, the real watcher wasn’t evil, just incompetent. He was still right.”

“I am sure the next one will be a great improvement,” Giles said stiffly, still unwilling to give the vampire any credit for being more knowledgeable about his former employers than he was.

Faith gave Buffy a puzzled look and she opened her mouth to explain, then shut it again. Faith’s easy assumption that Buffy didn’t know what she was doing when she tried to destroy the glove rather than give it to Gwendolyn, had created a lack of trust that Buffy wasn’t sure she was ready to overlook yet.

Faith turned away with a casual shrug, but her clenched fists and deliberately blank face were hard to miss. With a sigh, Buffy said, “Faith. I…I guess I should tell you about Spike.”

“Spike? Miss I-used-to-be-a-cheerleader knows somebody called Spike?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like my kind of guy. Is he hot?”

“I think so.” Buffy’s stiff posture and clenched teeth had Faith narrowing her eyes until she saw the blond slayer visibly force herself to relax.

“Okay, B,” Faith said with surprising softness. “I get it. Whoever Spike is; he’s hands off. No problem.”

“He’s not a who; he’s a what.” Giles voice was cold and crisp. He met Buffy’s furious eyes defiantly, his distaste for Spike clear in every line of his body.

“A wha-?” Faith’s eyes narrowed again. “Is he saying your honey isn’t human?”

Buffy’s guilty shrug told Faith that she had guessed correctly.

“He’s a freakin’ vampire? No wonder the Council fired Giles! No offense,” she offered hastily as she saw his shoulders stiffen.

Buffy looked back and forth between Giles’ almost triumphant face and Faith’s suspicious one, and for the first time, she fully realized what Spike meant when he said that they couldn’t be together. For all her bad girl behavior and talk, Faith was a slayer to her core and it was clear that she had just heard something that shocked her completely.

Buffy glared back at her sister slayer for a moment, then her shoulders sagged and she said, “How about we go by the Bronze and find a quiet corner to talk about his?”

Faith blinked in surprise, then nodded slowly. The invitation to socialize outside of school or patrol was unusual enough to pique her curiosity and she decided to hear what Buffy had to say before making any more judgments about the other slayer.

An hour later, when Buffy had finished reciting, in a flat, emotionless voice, the events of the previous two years, Faith sat back and stared at her with newly respectful eyes. Far from being the pampered, goody-two-shoes cheerleader that Faith had been so sure was Buffy’s life, she now knew that this was a girl who had fallen in love with not one, but two vampires, had been brutally raped and tortured by the first one and comforted and cared for by the second. A girl who had killed her former boyfriend and his consort; a slayer who had fed a human man to an incapacitated slayer-killer that she had been responsible for crippling in the first place. As Buffy spoke softly of her lack of interest in human boys, her growing friendship with and affection for Spike and his for her, as well as their knowledge that the chances of a Slayer and a soulless vampire having any kind of permanent relationship were very slim, Faith began to understand the sudden silences to which her new acquaintance was prone, as well as Buffy’s apparent lack of interest in the opposite sex.

“Damn, B. You’ve just been having all the fun, haven’t you? No wonder there wasn’t much for me to do until Kalistos came along.” There was a brief silence while Faith struggled with an emotion not familiar to her. “So, you and this Spike guy – what’s the deal? You just gonna pine away here hoping he comes back, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy answered, her eyes looking off into a distance only she could see. “He says he’s working on some sort of plan, but he won’t tell me what it is. I’m supposed to tell Willy if I need him to come back and help me with something; other than that, I just wait, I guess. And try to stay alive.”

“Easier said than done in our line of work,” Faith responded wryly.

“We did okay tonight.”

“YOU did okay tonight. I almost handed the world to that bitch on a silver platter. She was right. I AM an idiot. I could fuck up a one-man parade.”

“You didn’t know. We understand that. You thought you were doing the right thing. It’s no biggie. Hey, my boyfriend is part of the Scourge of Europe. And he killed two Slayers. It’s not like I’m going to throw stones.”

Faith snorted. “Man, the Council has a couple of winners in us, doesn’t it?”

“Best slayers they’ve ever had,” Buffy said firmly. “And we’re going to prove it. Just as soon as we finish dancing to this song – come on.”

Leading the world’s only other Chosen One to the dance floor, Buffy followed Faith in providing the other patrons a glimpse of what slayers could do with their super strong and super limber bodies when properly motivated by a strong bass line. They finished the dance, flushed and laughing; leaving the bar arm in arm and walking back to Buffy’s house and few hours of sleep before they faced a new day and a new evil.