DISCLAIMER: The characters of BtVS does not belong to me, which is quite obvious as I wouldn't have done certain things to them, but anyway, not mine and no profit made. You know, the basics.
This is, as everything I write, lesbian themed, and would classify as F/B fiction, set roughly at the end of s6. It is also a series of short stories that I call "Secondary Characters", beginning with, amazingly enough, Secondary Characters and continuing with Secondary Characters 2 and so on. Reading them in that order is probably a good idea too. ^_^
Secondary Characters 1
By Carola "Ryûchan" Eriksson
Faith knew them well. Hell, she'd been a secondary character for all her life, always coming in second to other priorities.
She thought that being a Slayer would be different, make her different. The Chosen One.
Ha.
Sorry, no can do, that spot's already taken. She was just the first runner up. The Chosen Second. And second best is nothing but the first loser.
The real irony is that for once in her life, Faith hadn't minded. Not minded at all. She was happy to play second best to the shiny, radiant wonder of HER.
But that's the thing about secondary characters… they're thrown in among the stars for just a moment, used and abused in every way possible and then…
Discarded, thrown aside, forgotten… like so much garbage.
Secondary characters.
Well Faith Wilkins was done being a secondary character. She wasn't going to fight with her anymore, for whatever twisted scraps of attention she could get. No, that only made her all the more the center of the universe, and Faith was tired of playing that game.
Time to be something else. Herself.
Faith Wilkins. Ironic that.
Faith had gone to jail, too tired to fight anymore. Perhaps deep down hoping that she would one day have earned some forgiveness for her mistakes.
But nobody cared. Out of sight, out of mind. Secondary characters aren't given any thought once they had filled their purpose.
Then one day she actually had a visitor.
It was him. The one person who always treated her like the number one. That acted like she was right there at the center of the universe. The one person she knew without question had genuinely loved her.
The man she in her heart looked upon as her father… Richard Wilkins.
Last Faith had seen him, he had still been the invulnerable and immortal Mayor bent on ascension, well on his way to becoming a true demon in the mortal realm. Then she had ended up in a coma, and he had ended up dead.
And yet, there he was. Large as life, the same goofy smile, borderline psychotic behaviour, and fear of germs. And he wasn't about to let his little girl rot in jail.
It took about two weeks, during which he visited her every chance they got. After those two weeks, Faith was suddenly free again. She barely had the time to realize what had happened before he used his contacts to get her sentence dropped, picked her up outside the jail, hugged her hard, and took her home.
Sunnydale.
She hadn't wanted to go back there, really… it was, after all, where she lived. But Sunnydale was his home, so it would be Faith's home too. She'd fight for that right, for him.
As a true demon Richard Wilkins had no longer been invulnerable, briefly, and that had been used against him. What those that fought him did not know was that as a true, pure demon, he could not be killed. His body had been destroyed during that short time of vulnerability, banning him from the mortal plane, but he had still been alive.
It had taken him a long time before the powers that had been his after his ascension to true demonhood had granted him a way back into the world. It meant sealing his power and return as he had been at the moment before ascending – immortal, invulnerable, but still mostly human. He hadn't thought twice about it.
He had a little girl to come home to.
At first the Wilkins Manor had seemed impossibly huge and cavernous to Faith, the sounds of her own steps echoing in the empty rooms and halls. It was huge, it was luxurious, it was gorgeous, it was state of the art, it was science and magic combined, it was a fortress, and it was a home. All it lacked was people.
But not for long.
Faith had not rated a place in the illustrious Scoobies. She had tried to earn a spot, but been rejected as unfit, unworthy.
So, if that was true, how come she had rated a Goonies?
Goonies.
A band of misfits and outcasts that made by on their wits and the skin of their teeth. It was very appropriate.
When Richard Wilkins had first returned to flesh, and his Sunnydale, he had walked around, observing the changes. And he had found the remains of the Initiative labs, half buried underneath UC Sunnydale. It had intrigued him.
He had sifted through the things so hastily left behind and taken them to his home. One of the things he had found in the ruins was an early experiment, a test of some of the techniques that would later be used to create Adam.
As a human, the boy had been named Larry.
Human Larry had died during Wilkins ascension, but his corpse had been one of the many, both human and non-human, secretly harvested that night by agents of the Initiative. Steel and mechanics on the inside for most part, and a cross between troll and zombie on the outside, still the human mind of Larry was mostly intact. Larry was large, lumbering and impossibly strong, but not much more than a not so bright boy lost in the world.
Wilkins had brought him home to work for them, and Larry stayed.
Faith hadn't been in Sunnydale for long when she came across someone familiar during patrol.
It was a young woman, terrified to the point she barely seemed human, hiding in the trash in a dark alley. Faith felt as if though they'd met before, but couldn't really place the girl's face, and when the terrified girl would not let go of her jacket, Faith brought her home.
The girl turned out to be Amy Madison, black witch and dark magic junkie, childhood friend of Willow Rosenberg… formerly known as Rat-Amy, having spent the last several years as a rodent in Willow's care.
Faith had seen the girl around school a few times before the transformation into a rat, but had honestly not payed much attention to Willow's playmate. Larry on the other hand had known the girl since they were toddlers, and was truly upset at the state she was in. So Richard Wilkins opened his home to another stray.
This stray came with a lot of problems, her addiction and withdrawal symptoms not nearly as unnerving as the catatonic state she was in. But Amy managed to pass on some information as well, about the dark events that was shaking Sunnydale.
Faith had, once her shock at how far her old nemesis, the ever so moral Willow, had fallen, wanted to go join the Scoobies in their struggles, but Richard had convinced her to stay put and out of the way. Instead they holed up in the manor, waiting for the outcome, since, as Richard had stated, there was nothing they could do to change events now.
Although, Richard Wilkins would protect his children if it came to that. And he began working to cover all eventualities right away.
That was the reason another lost sheep, wounded and scarred by his encounter with Sunnydale's finest, found himself on Richard Wilkins' doorstep. The former Mayor still had many servants among both the human and non-human denizens of Sunnydale, and they had found the boy and brought him there.
His name was Jonathan.
Another strange reunion took place then, as Jonathan had been friends with Larry and the still oblivious Amy, and was another vaguely familiar face to Faith. Richard Wilkins shook his head in silence as he realized he had gotten yet another child to care for, but Jonathan would prove a great asset to the team of misfits.
While the boy's shamanic skills were rudimentary at best, he was otherwise a certifiable genius that had learned greatly from the deranged Warren. In fact, the boy had managed to deceive not only his two troika companions, but the Scoobie gang as well, by leaving a robot double in his place as he made his escape from the disaster he had the good sense to realize was coming.
Richard introduced the boy to the salvaged Initiate equipment, and offered him a place there with them. Jonathan would have unlimited resources for his work and protection from the wrath of the Scoobie gang, but what most appealed to the boy was that he had friends there, real friends, in Larry and Amy. The boy wanted to help them both, Larry with fine-tuning that would allow him to, in time, appear to be human, and the young woman whom had always had a tendency to stand up for the weak and bullied, to find herself again.
But science couldn't help Amy.
They tried, all of them, they really did… but Amy did not get better. Instead, she got steadily worse. Help would instead come from another source.
By accident the Vengeance Demon and estranged Scoobie Anyanka felt the pain and suffering of Amy and sought her out, even though it was not the material for a vengeance wish as such. Instead it was Anya's own pain and suffering from recent events that made her respond to Amy's call. She showed up at the manor and Richard met her.
They talked for a long time, while Faith nervously wandered from window to window expecting her to show up, with the Scoobies in tow, to finally attack them. Nothing like that happened.
When the two demons emerged from their private conversation, Anya immediately went to to Amy's side. It didn't take her long to figure out what was causing the suffering, and she seemed quite exasperated when she did.
Apparently, the spell that Willow had used to restore Amy to her human form had been incomplete, and the dark magic had been eating away at her soul. Between them, Anya, Richard and Jonathan decided on a form of binding spell that would lock down on Amy's wild fledgling dark magic, and use that energy instead to restore her self. A side effect of the spell would be that Amy was no longer able to use her magic abilities… but instead she would be a shape-shifter.
With the mark of Hecate still upon her, Amy would be able to lend the shape of any beast the she could imagine, at will. They all hoped it would be enough to appease the girl once she realized that the power she had been born with was locked away, out of her reach, probably for life.
Anya stayed around, nursing Amy back to health, and found this group of people to be more accepting and understanding of her nature than she would have expected. Although the Goonies were not evil per se, the group had enough darkness in itself to not be condemning Anya for her demonic ways, and she was treated with respect, which was a welcome novelty.
And so Anya went domestic. She cooked, she baked. She played nurse when someone was injured, she forced the others to go grocery shopping with her. She beat the crap out of everyone else at any boardgame that involved money. She had long evening talks with Richard on subjects such as the demon world or parenting. She shared raucous and raunchy jokes with Faith, often about the deficiency of men. She told tales about her long and colorful past as a Vengeance Demon to a surprisingly appreciative audience.
In short, she was a permanent and invaluable fixture to the manor long before she officially moved in.
Faith watched her new friends with some amusement, silently taking notice of how Larry was completely smitten by Jonathan and ended up having hissing contests with Harmony – no-one really knew how or why the failed vampire showed up around the house on and off, but she did, and eventually they got used to having her around – who also had been taken with the group genius, who himself was happily unaware of what was going on.
Faith also watched as Amy completely fell head over heels for Anya, utterly adoring the woman and following her around like a faithful little puppy. Anya, for her part, seemed unaware of her new friend's true feelings, but Faith had seen Anya begin to eye Amy's tall, lanky form with an increasing appreciation at times, and made internal bets with herself on how long it would take for those two to come together.
It seemed that the only ones that didn't have something going on for them in the romance department was Richard and Faith herself, but that, Faith figured, was just the way of Slayerness in her case. Besides, love was such a pain in the ass, and only left you with a knife in the guts anyway.
And for the first time in… forever, life was OK.
She had a… somehow, someway, Faith had gotten a family. Perhaps they were not the most pure and innocent of groups, but they cared for one another and were intensely loyal, something Faith had never had directed at her before. It was new.
It was home.
And Faith was happy.
The End
Sequel Secondary Characters 2