Posted as:
SHU 15MinFic: Getting To Know You
Wed Aug 6 2003 2:28:12 am

Here be a supposed 15 Minute Ficlet. Not posted in my LJ because I went way the hell over. Oops.

Word's down at the bottom, but I'm pretty sure you'll figure it out before you get there. :-)

This is set right after The Making of a SuperTeam.

*****

Faith worked hard to develop an acute awareness of her surroundings. It wasn't as hard as it sounded, considering a bit of superpowered help on the matter, but nevertheless it was something to which she had given special attention. She reasoned that it was harder for someone to stab you in the back if you knew they were there.

Unless, of course, you let them.

Faith noticed that blonde girl was always hiding just out of sight, thinking that she was acting with some sort of secrecy. Despite the sudden tendency of floorboards to creak, or lights to flicker. Once, a lamp fell over. Faith just sighed, and pretended, for the moment, that she hadn't noticed.

One day, she got tired of this, and whirled around, picking the smaller woman up by the throat, where she dangled for a minute or two, kicking her feet aimlessly and choking in surprise. (And in Faith's hand, but that was beside the point.)

"Is there a reason you're stalking me?" Faith asked, in a voice that almost qualified as chipper.

Lily squeaked and wheezed, before being dropped into an armchair, where she sat rubbing her throat and glaring at Faith. After a coughing fit, she managed to gasp out, "I'm not *stalking* you. We *are* living in the same building."

"Mmm-hmm." She put her hands on her hips, and leaned over Lily, ominously. "I already have a shadow, thanks. And even *that* looks a bit shifty at times."

"Okay." Lily twiddled her thumbs. "So, if we're done here --"

Faith caught the girl as she got up, effortlessly throwing her back into the chair. (It skidded several feet across the floor upon impact.) "Talk."

"That's just *it*," Lily whined. "You don't."

"I'm sorry?"

She rubbed her throat a little longer, absentmindedly, and Faith noticed the red marks that she had left there, without meaning to. "Look, you're a member of the team now, right?"

"Right..." Faith said, still uneasy on the subject.

"Not a damn one of us knows anything about you, other than Xander." Lily lifted her chin defiantly. "I thought I'd go in for recon."

Faith sighed. "You realize that I've fought giant robots with more stealth than you, right?" When Lily didn't answer, she continued, "All right. You get one question."

"What?"

"Per day, if you don't piss me off." She hopped up onto the table, sitting Indian-style. "Anything you want. As long as you quit following me around."

Lily tilted her head thoughtfully. "And you promise to answer?"

All of Faith's instincts screamed against this. Which troubled her, as they were what she followed above all else. "I -- I guess."

This bothered Faith even more when Lily scrunched up her features (in what Faith supposed was deep thought), falling silent for several minutes.

"Are we doing this sometime today?" she asked, finally.

Lily blinked, and it seemed that she hadn't even heard the comment -- she showed no signs of it. "So," she said. "What is it with you and BB?"

Faith sucked in a huge breath, and stared at Lily in disbelief. The girl just *sat* there, looking as oblivious as ever, but then *how* had she come up with that question on the first *try*?

"You don't have any enemies?" she retorted, tightly.

"Of course I do," Lily said, mystified, "what do you --"

"Well then." Faith gripped the edge of the table, so hard that she could feel the wood as it strained to keep from cracking in her palms. "B and I. We're enemies."

Lily frowned. (Faith tried to remember why she hadn't just strangled her.) "Well, yeah," she responded, slowly, "but what I mean is --"

"If I can ask a question of my own," Faith interrupted, "what is it with you and Stumpy?"

As Faith suspected it would, this caused Lily to turn positively white. She fairly glowed in the nearly nonexistent lighting of this particular (still-under-construction) room. "I -- just --" She stuttered, at first, before gulping. "He and I -- we --"

"I don't think it's fair that Lily should have to answer that."

A third voice, coming from just behind Faith. She jumped off the table, whirling around, cursing herself when she realized that she hadn't anticipated Shane's approach at all. She cursed herself, and Lily, and especially Buffy -- it seemed that the mere mention of her could still drive Faith to distraction.

She hated that. Deeply.

"Why not?" she snarled.

The dark-haired rich boy was still standing in the doorway with his arms folded, and he shrugged, showing no reaction to her tone. "You didn't answer hers. She shouldn't have to answer one from you."

"Oh yeah?" Faith cocked an eyebrow. "Tell me, then, oh Son of Satan, what's up with you and Kommander Viking?"

"Hunter and I went to school together," he said smoothly. "We were close. I cared about him. He turned on me and joined my sister and Vince." He raised an eyebrow in return. "Anything else?"

Faith was shaken by the starkness of the story, told in such an emotionless manner, and how much it mirrored the one she had just avoided telling herself.

(She hated that, too.)

"No," she answered. "That covers it pretty nicely, for the Cliff's Notes. Thanks, McMahon."

"It's nothing." Shane looked from one heroine to the other, and shrugged again. "I just...don't believe in keeping secrets anymore." He turned, leaving the room as silently as he'd come in.

Faith was still looking after him when Lily, with a slight quiver in her voice, offered, "Maybe we just started off on the wrong foot."

She turned back around. "Huh?"

"I think we ought to start off with something easier." Lily grinned, but as she did, she rubbed at her eye in a way that Faith strongly suspected was intended to camouflage tears. "We can work our way up to that sort of thing."

And Faith, despite herself, was moved with pity. It occurred to her, then, that she was far from the only one on this ramshackle team who was recovering from a betrayal.

"Yeah," she said, trying her hardest for (and coming pretty close to) a friendly smile. "Hey, we're teammates now, right? We've got plenty of time to get to know each other."

"I guess so." Lily sniffed, and then offered a (slightly watery) smile of her own. "Just think of all the questions we'll get to ask."

Faith's smile became a little more tolerant, a little more real. This girl, this new girl, was still obviously a mess, didn't have the callused outer shell, had yet to develop the survival instincts, much less the hyper-awareness of everyone around her.

But then, that was what this whole superhero business was all about, wasn't it? Looking out for other people, keeping them from harm, and all that.

It's harder for a knife to find your back, Faith decided, when someone else was watching it.

*****

The word, you may have guessed, was question.