Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire


Chp.21


L.A. Traffic


Info: 1st chapter



Maneuvering the huge transport vehicle through the early morning Los Angeles
traffic, and taking directions from Faith, who sits to his right. Giles wishes
that Xander would've taken over as they’d reached the city limits, but the dark
haired young man had finally gotten Buffy situated in the back of the bus, and
laid down himself quickly falling in to his own dream world.


“Blasted idiots!” He yells, at the line of traffic in front of him. “Get the
bleeding hell out of the way.” He rests his head on the steering wheel, as he
waits for the line to start moving again.


“Yo, G. Don’t sweat it.” Faith leans over to the ex-watcher, and pats him
hesitantly, but reassuringly on the shoulder.


He looks over to the dark haired slayer, and smiles at her in thanks.


“The street we need to be on is just right up there.” She points to the next
street up on the right. “We might get there in the next millennium, at the
snails pace that we’re crawling at, but we’ll get there.” She looks at him with
amusement dancing in her eyes.


“Oh I don’t think it’ll take that long Faith, but at the rate we are
currently moving at, I wouldn’t rule out next May sometime.” He says
sarcastically, if they could banter between each other, it made everything a
little better. They’d been doing it for the last two hours. Although it isn’t
the slayer he wants to be talking to, but it was better than one of the little
girl slayers that he didn’t really know, other than Kennedy, and he thanks god
that it isn’t Willows new girlfriend, he’s had to endure for the last few hours.


The traffic starts to move a slight bit faster, they are now up to a turtles
pace, by Giles count. He suddenly gets fed up and starts doing what everyone
else on the street is doing. He pulls the string beside his head, and makes the
horn go off. Waking nearly everyone on the bus, with the loud noise.


Nearly rolling out of the seat he’d took as a bed, Xander scrambles up into a
sitting position, and looks around him. Noticing that a lot of the girls had
been startled awake also. “Whoa, G-man!” He exclaims, after getting the ringing
in his ears to stop. “Lay off the horn, will ya? You could wake the dead with
that thing.” He quips from the seat directly behind the man in the drivers seat.


“Xander, how many times do I have. . . Oh I give up, so just forget it.” The
man sighs, looking in the mirror at the man sitting behind him. “Also, if your
snoring didn’t wake the dead, I’m quite positive that the horn blowing didn’t.”
Giles quips back, letting some of his tension out as he traded barbs with the
young people around him.


Finally making it to the right hand turn Faith had pointed out, he takes it.


Faith leans forward in her seat again, “okay, Giles the hotels right up on
the next street.” She smiles. “You can’t miss that big, honkin’ building. It’s
only the size of the Taj Mahal.” Directions given she sits back as far as she
can, as Giles nods his head in agreement to her.


“Thank you, Faith.” He says, as he notices the building she is talking about.


“No, prob.” She states as she turns her attention to the man half lying on
her, and crosses her arms over her chest.


Noticing that he’s awake, she smiles into his eyes. “Hey, how ya doin’?” She
asks him quietly.


He looks up into her concerned brown eyes, smiling weakly. “About as good as
guy that’s been stabbed in the gut, can be.” He answers her with a quip, and
slightly chuckles grabbing his side as he does. Wincing, “well probably not as
good as I said.”


She can’t help it, a smile blooms across her dark features, as she takes him
in. “If you can joke about it, then you’re gonna be alright.” She takes in a
heavy breath, glancing over her shoulder to the back of the bus. “Wish I could
say the same for, B though.” Her smile fades to almost nothing thinking of her
sister-at-arms, as she lays motionless in the backseat. Her bravado crashes as
she thinks about the way Buffy had just collapsed right in front of them all.


Having no idea what the black haired beauty was talking about. Wood had
passed out in the drivers’ seat of the bus as they’d all gathered to check out
the crater they’d left behind them. Hence him not knowing about what happened
afterwards. He remembered her moving him to the seat they both now occupied, but
that was the last thing he remembered, before the blackness had taken him over
again.


“What happened to Buffy?” He hesitantly asks, wheezing and coughing a little,
as he says it. It seems as if he’s used up all of his strength just to ask that
one simple little question.


Faith looks the man directly in the eyes, then lets her gaze follow a path
down his body, thinking he looks like shit. She takes in another deep breath,
before she starts the explanation of the whole debacle of what had happened at
the edge of the crater, not even three hours ago. She looks back up at the dark
mans powerfully dark eyes. “We were all just standing there, looking at what was
once Sunnydale. She turned around, I think she was gonna say something. I mean
that’s what it looked like to me. Then it was like time just slowed down.” Faith
looks away from his eyes, remembering how it all happened. “ She fell.” Taking
another deep breath, she lets it go slowly. “Man, she just took a header, face
first right into the dirt. It just happened so fast, and there wasn’t a thing
any of us could do.” She looks back down at the stricken look on the black mans
face. “Willow thinks she may be in some kinda catatonic state. She just
collapsed right in front of us.” She says the last in total disbelief.


She feels his warm hand cover hers as best as it can. “Willows, going to do a
spell to see if she can get into her mind, and get her out. We have no idea if
it’ll work, but we, or they have to try.” She finishes, as the hand squeezes
hers comfortingly.


“You’re worried.” He’s not asking, just stating a fact, as he feels her hand
shaking in his.


“Yeah, I really am.” She looks out of the windshield, thinking of all the
terrible stuff she’d done to the girl in the past, and just as they had started
to mend their fences, Buffy goes and takes a nosedive inside her head. “The
girls been taking it harder than anyone else ever has. I mean taking it
ultimately hard on the chin for seven miserable years now. I didn’t help the
matter any either, when I came into her hellhole of a life. It just got a whole
lot worse after I was gone.” Shaking her head. “The girl just lost almost
everything she ever cared about, back there, and yet again, she lost the man she
loves, and this time it’s for keeps. Hell. I don’t blame her, I think I would go
inside my head, too.” She turns her hand over underneath his and squeezes his
fingers tightly in her own.


Robin looks up in surprise, drawing in a deep breath. “She told you that?” He
asks her, the incredibleness of the admission coming through in his voice.


Faith looks back at him, raising her eyebrows at him in amusement. “ Oh, come
on, Robin. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. The way she totally defended him,
and all. It was wicked obvious how she felt about Bleach Boy.” She exclaims,
chuckling at the total obliviousness of all the men around the blonde couple.
“Oh, no I knew she cared for him, but I didn’t think. . . Well there was that
time, when we had to save Xander from his date.” He thinks back to the one and
only date that he’d had with the blonde slayer. “She ran to Spike, before she
even thought about the other two humans in the room with her. I just thought
that she had some kind of obligation to the guy. Never even believed she was in
love with him.”


“Had to save the Xan-man from another date, huh?” She can’t help but chuckle
at the poor guys taste in women. “ Can’t that boy find someone who isn’t or
wasn’t a demon at one time or other?” She says this under her breath, still
smiling at the whole situation.


“That’s a long story, I really don’t feel up to telling right now.” He sighs.
“I don’t think I have the strength to tell it.”


“That’s okay, I’ll get it out of you sooner or later.” She raises her brows
suggestively at him, and smiles her evil, sexy smile.


“I’m sure you will. It may surprise you.” His head lolls to the side, to look
out of the window beside him. “Looks, like we made it.” He states, as he notices
the huge building the bus has just pulled up in front of.


A/N: My formatting has gone all kerploowy. I hope the chapter is readable. I couldn't get it right no matter how I did it. Sorry:(