Living For Love - (2) Intelligence or Ignorance?

Tasha

Chapter Summary: Faith and Wesley look over the information they were given by Spike and Buffy. Everyone else waits to hear from Faith and Wesley on their decision to stay or go. Will the newcomers listen to what the find out, or will their prejudices and preconceived notions make them turn a blind eye to the possibilities of a new life in Sunnydale?

Disclaimer and Distribution notes are listed on the Index page of this story.

Wesley removed his glasses. He chewed on the end of one of the arms while he read some of the information in the book he was given. "This is extraordinary."

Faith looked up from her position across from Wes. Her feet were on the table, and she leaned back in her chair far enough that two of the legs were up off the floor. "What is?" She'd listened to Wesley mutter several "Good Lord's" and "Bloody Hell's" over the last two hours they'd been reading.

Wesley nearly dropped his glasses. He'd been so engrossed in his reading that he forgot Faith was even in the same room with him. He glanced over at Faith. "If we are to believe this information is accurate, it flies in the face of all the Council's has taught for hundreds of years."

"You mean the gibberish the Council pushes off as the gospel truth?" Faith snorted in disgust. Ever since she found out about being a Slayer, she'd felt like an even bigger freak than she was before. The Council treated her like she was an abnormality of "Slayerhood" as well. The documents in front of her said she wasn't a freak. She actually felt a little more special.

"You should not be so disrespectful towards your calling or your elders," Wesley chastised. "Being a Slayer is a honored position, and the Council simply tries to guide you girls in the right direction. They only want to help you."

"The Council is made up of a bunch of dictators who get upset if their toys don't play like they want them to," Faith snarked. She was fed up with the mentality that she belonged to anyone other than herself. The scroll she read gave her a purpose, but she also felt freer than she had since first knowing about her calling.

"Why I never," Wesley blustered on in self-righteous frustration. "I'm sure the Council will be interested in seeing these papers. They are probably not aware of this information being spread around, and it would be helpful to …"

"Wait a minute tweed boy." Faith jumped up from her chair. She snatched the book out of Wesley's hands. "I don't think B gave us this stuff to hand it over to the Council. Remember her little pep talk about only leave with what you came with?"

Wesley stood up, grabbed the book in Faith's hands, and wrestled her for it. "Then she shouldn't have given me proof of her blasphemy." He fell to the floor after a hard yank away from Faith lost his grip on the book. "B?" He questioned from his position on the floor.

"B stands for Buffy Summers, a little nickname." Faith almost laughed at the gobsmacked look on Wes' face. "Don't tell me you didn't believe that she was who she said she was?"

"We have no proof of her claim, except the documents given to us by demons." Wesley slipped his glasses back on his face, and he worked his way back up into a chair at the table.

"I'm telling you this straight up, Watcher. She is who she says she is." Faith remembered the different type of tinglies she felt around the blonde pair. "I could feel it. She's a lot more than your everyday vampire. That Spike guy is different too."

"That is where you must be wrong. Hence your hypothesis about Miss Summers is inaccurate as well." Wesley grabbed a book out of his leather attaché. He tossed it in front of Faith on the table. "Spike is also known as William the Bloody, the Slayer of Slayers, and he is a member of the Scourge of Europe. He was a ruffian before his turning, and he was a murdering fiend afterwards. The Council has this documented already. He is a normal evil vampire."

"Just like the Council is right about everything, Watcher? I don't think so." Faith shook her head back and forth. "I don't care what this book says. I know what I felt."

"You are still a fairly new Slayer. Perhaps your radar is off." Wes refused to believe that the vampire he'd read about during his youth was anything other than what he already knew him to be.

"There is something different about both of them. I'm positive about it." Faith grabbed Wes by the lapels of his tweed jacket. She pushed him up against the wall of the hotel room. "And I'm tired of you second guessing my choices or telling me that I'm wrong. I'm the Slayer, not you."

Wes gulped hard when Faith released him. He watched her gather up the rest of the documents from the table. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to arrange a meeting with Mr. Rupert Giles, her old Watcher." He wasn't convinced yet, but Rupert Giles was a name Wes respected while he underwent his Watcher training.

"I won't let you hurt them," Faith declared defiantly. "No matter what you decide, I'm not leaving Sunnydale."

"Until I meet with Mister Giles, I will not make a decision. I think you are not wise in your course of action." Wesley straightened his jacket and backed away from Faith.

Before Faith was able to say anything else, the phone rang. Faith and Wes stared at the phone. Neither of them was sure who should answer it or who wanted to.

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Spike laughed from his position across the hotel parking lot. "The pillocks are staring at the phone as if it is cursed." He nearly doubled over in laughter. "This is priceless."

"Be good." Buffy turned around and solidly punched Spike in the upper arm.

"I'm always good, baby." Spike wrapped his arms around Buffy's mid-section. "I can make you scream my name for hours without breaking a sweat."

"None of that. We're on a mission." Buffy's body quivered and her legs wobbled. "Besides we can't sweat, remember?"

"You're no fun." Spike pouted like a child who had his favorite toy taken away. "Who knows what other perks we'll keep finding out about? I may end up sweating like a pig."

"Ewww!" Buffy made a disgusted face at Spike. "Could you be any more gross, Spike?"

Spike nibbled on the side of Buffy's neck near his mating mark. He growled deep in his chest, and one of his hands pinched the hardened pebble of her nipple through her top. "I thought there was nothing about my body you didn't like, pet?" He whispered near her ear.

"That's not fair, Spike. That's being evil." Buffy whimpered. She tried to squirm away from his grasp, but her body betrayed what her mind told her she should do. "I promise you lots of loving when we get home, but for now we need to concentrate on those two." She shifted in Spike's embrace. "We have to know if they'll be waiting around the corner to shoot an arrow into my heart or not."

Spike sighed. His Childe and Mate knew his one weakness, his Achilles Heal. Her safety and happiness were the most important things to him. He would give his unlife if it meant she would continue to walk the Earth. "Now who's playing dirty pool? You know I can't fight you when you use that argument."

"Good, at least I have one ace in the hole." Buffy smirked.

"You have a lot more than that, and you know it." Spike snuggled up behind Buffy, and he focused his attention back on his acute sense of hearing.

One thing Buffy and Spike found out early on was that if they gave it any thought, they heard things over much greater distances than normal vampires. It was both a helpful and annoying trait. With some focusing and meditation techniques they learned from Giles, they were able to fine tune the sense to assist them. They were able to turn it "off" when they didn't need it too.

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Despite his earlier blustering, Wes hadn't contacted the Council yet. A part of him was afraid the accusations were true. It was unwise to arrive in a Hellmouth at night. No arrangements were made for lodging ahead of time either. Travers told him that there were always vacancies at the hotels. So, a reservation wasn't necessary ahead of time. Now, he wondered if Travers expected them to be dead before lodging was necessary.

Faith pushed Wes closer to the phone. There was no way she was answering it. Her gut tightened, waiting to find out who was on the other end.

Wesley slowly grabbed the phone's handset. His hands shook, and he put the receiver up to his ear.

"Mr. Wesley Wyndham-Pryce?" A distinctly British accent floated over the telephone line.

"Yes," Wesley answered with a slight tremor in his voice. 'Who else knows we are in Sunnydale and where we are staying?' He thought to himself.

"Hello," The male voice started off the conversation politely. "My name is Rupert Giles. I believe you are familiar with my name."

"Indeed, Mister Giles." Wesley paced back and forth from the nightstand to the end of his bed. "You were a well respected Watcher until the scandal in Sunnydale."

"Scandal?" Giles laughed on his end of the phone. "You make it sound like I had a shameful affair with my charge instead of seeing the light out of the darkness that we've been taught."

"Why … I would … never suggest …" Wesley stuttered and turned several shades of red.

"Relax Mr. Wyndham-Pryce." Giles tried to calm the young Watcher. 'This one is wound pretty tight.' He switched the phone to his other ear. "I find it amusing to hear what attribute the Council has given my actions and decisions over the last year."

"I am perplexed myself about the reasons you chose this path, Mr. Giles." Wesley sat down on the edge of his bed. "You were a well respected man both intellectually and dutifully, despite the lapse during your young adulthood years."

"You feel I have turned my back on the oath I took to train the Chosen One and remove all evil, even at the expense of my own life?" Giles had gone over his oath many times in the first weeks after they broke away from the Council. He'd nitpicked every line. In the end, he felt that he had stayed true to the intent of the oath.

"You allow demons to roam free and unchecked," Wesley stated succinctly. "I met two of them when we came into town. You can't honestly believe that she is still your Slayer?"

"I believe exactly that because it is true." Giles defended his choices and Buffy's destiny. It wasn't the destiny that he thought she'd have, but now he was glad that his Slayer wasn't the same trained puppy that other girls had been in the past. "She is more of a pure Slayer now than she was before. Her soul remains intact."

"It seems unfathomable, Mr. Giles." Wesley absentmindedly scribbled on a notepad on the nightstand. "Your actions fly in the face of the very oath you swore to before God and country."

"Will you stop being a trained prat for a moment and listen to yourself." Giles pinched the bridge of his nose. His glasses had long since been removed earlier in the conversation. "I swore to defend this realm against evil. Not all demons are evil. Many species simply want to live out their lives in peace without our interference in their lives. Hell, I know of many humans who are more evil than some of the demons I've met."

"Where do you draw the line on what is evil or not if you eradicated the guideline you used to live by?" A part of Wesley's mind wanted to open the door to the new knowledge. It rebelled against the training and abuse he'd received at hands of his father and the Council. The more predominant and fearful portion of his mind spat back the arguments his father beat into him. "Are they only evil if they kill children instead of adults? Maybe they are only evil if they kill more than 50 people a year?"

Cursing and a loud male voice echoed from the phone out into the hotel room. Wes nearly dropped the phone in a panic over the unexpected reaction out of who he'd been told was a passive man by nature.

"Give me that! Are you really that much of an idiot?" Faith snatched the phone away from Wes. "You're going to get us killed."

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