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Faith stirred in the seat next to him, and Xander glanced over to see her still asleep. If everything had gone according to plan, they would have been in Los Angeles by now; instead, they were driving through states Xander had forgotten existed. Maybe he might have remembered how big America really was if he’d made it past Oxnard in his attempted tour of the fifty states after his high school graduation.
It was luck alone that he even had a traveling companion; his layover in Denver had coincided with Faith’s. He was flying in from South Africa, and she’d come from Cleveland, and they were both headed to California for the holidays. Unfortunately the storm of the century had snarled airline traffic for days to come, and the only way to get there was to rent a car and drive.
Although Xander had acclimated well to Africa, and he knew he would go back as soon as he could, home was still California. Buffy had wanted to visit the crater that Sunnydale had become, and he thought it might be time to pay his last respects to Anya’s memory, then move on. His grief was a lighter burden to bear these days.
“Where are we?”
“Just passed through Salt Lake City,” he replied. They’d been unable to make it through the mountain passes, and so had been forced to detour through Wyoming and then south through Utah. Xander wasn’t impressed by the scenery, although he supposed that some might think it had a wild beauty. Red dirt and sage brush wasn’t his idea of pretty, though.
“Do you want me to drive?”
“I’m okay,” he said. “We can switch at the next stop.” Xander looked over at her briefly, not wanting to take his good eye off the road for long. “Are you hungry?”
“Getting there.”
The entire trip had been more than a little awkward so far. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d been flying, because there wouldn’t have been pressure to make conversation the way there was in the car.
Xander was aware that her relationship with Wood had ended recently, after three years together. Buffy had filled him in on what had happened, so he knew the subjects to stay away from at least.
Of course, with their past also seemingly out of bounds, that didn’t leave a lot to talk about.
“You going back to Africa when this is all over?” Faith asked out of the blue.
He nodded. “Probably, unless it’s impossible for some reason. What about you? Will you go back to Cleveland?”
“Robin wants to stay there,” she replied softly. “I guess I’ll give him his space.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Where do you want to go next?” He wasn’t sure what else to say, or to ask.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” she admitted. “Wherever the next big emergency is. Giles will have some ideas, I’m sure.”
“There’s a Hellmouth opening in Johannesburg,” he blurted out, before he could think better of it. Xander was sure that Faith wouldn’t want to go to Africa; it was beautiful, but it wasn’t for everybody.
She seemed to perk up slightly at the news, however. “A new one?”
“An old one that’s re-opening. George seems pretty sure of that,” Xander replied, referring to the young Watcher that Giles had sent to help with the research. Although the young man was from an old Council family, he seemed to have a better grasp on reality than Travers and his crew.
Then again, the kid had lost both parents when the headquarters had been blown up, so it made sense that he’d have a good understanding of the realities of fighting evil.
“How many Slayers do you have?”
“It fluctuates,” he replied, wondering how much he should say—if he should talk about the abuse that a lot of the girls had faced, the loss of parents to disease or accident, the incredible maturity they seemed to have from dealing with hardships that would have killed others.
His girls—he’d learned so much from them.
“Tell me about them,” Faith said, twisting in her seat so that she was facing him. “The ones we have now are going on to bigger and better things. Robin’s getting the next crop.”
She would probably miss them, Xander thought. From everything he’d heard, she had proved to be a good mentor. He began to describe them, to list their strengths and weaknesses, and how he and George were addressing them. About the Mlinka demons that were native to the region, and that were growing increasingly bolder and more aggressive as the energies from the Hellmouth increased. He told her about his day job as a project manager for a construction company, and how good it felt to create something he knew would last.
“Probably longer than I will,” he observed. “I don’t know how many years of this I have left in me.”
“Giles has lasted for a while.”
“You ever think about that?” he asked. “About dying?” He’d been forced to face his own mortality a number of times—when Caleb had put out his eye, when Anya had died, and this latest time, when he’d nearly been eviscerated by the Mlinka. The scars from that encounter weren’t pretty.
Faith stared out through the windshield, into the night sky. Xander could see the stars, but they didn’t compare to the starry nights he’d beheld in the middle of the African plains.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Usually after somebody fucked up on patrol, and I see my life flash before my eyes.” The twist of her lips indicated that she was aware she was using the cliché, and didn’t quite mean it. “Most of the time, I just think about the now.”
The silence stretched on between them, but it was no longer uncomfortable. It was the quiet of old friends who no longer had to speak, and Xander wondered when that had happened.
“He fell in love with somebody else,” she blurted out.
“Who?” Xander knew this part; Buffy had told him.
“Another Slayer, just a couple of years younger than me. I saw them when I came home one day. I thought he was just training her, but—” She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. It was probably time for me to move on anyway.”
He recognized that tone, those words; it was what you said when the life you’d had crumbled under your feet, and there wasn’t much you could do about it. It was the only thing you could say so you could get through one more day.
“Why don’t you come to Africa?” he found himself suggesting. “You’d like the girls, and they’d like you.”
“I don’t—”
“Not forever,” he said quickly, knowing Faith well enough that she needed time to heal, and she needed to not be trapped somewhere. Xander had this idea that perhaps his adopted home would help her to heal, and they could certainly use her services. “But I can take you around, show you the Serengeti. It’s incredible.”
“Where is it?”
“In the middle,” he replied. “I spend a lot of time in South Africa, but I’m really the only one who picks up the girls. It can be pretty dangerous sometimes.”
“Dangerous, huh?” Faith definitely sounded interested. “That sounds like it’s right up my alley.”
“It probably is.” He didn’t say any more, not wanting to scare her off with his enthusiasm. The idea of having someone from home—what had been home—was certainly attractive. Even if it was only for a little while.
“Yeah, okay,” she said abruptly. “If Giles doesn’t need me somewhere else.”
“Really?”
“You want me to come?” The question was more of a challenge.
“Yeah, I do.” He knew the words were nothing but the truth the moment they came out of his mouth. “It’ll be good to have a friend there.”
For a moment, he thought she might argue with his definition of their relationship, but she stayed silent, a smile curving her lips. “I guess it would be.”
Xander caught sight of a sign for McDonald’s off the highway. “You hungry?”
“Sure, and then I’ll drive.” She grinned at him. “We need to put the pedal down if we’re going to make it by Christmas.”
Xander just laughed, thinking that this road trip wasn’t going to be quite so long after all.