FIC: Five People Faith Never Saved (BtVS, CSI, SGA, HL, AB, SmVl)

[mhalachai]

Five People Faith Never Saved
A Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossover by mhalachaiswords

Summary: Five crossover situations that never happend to Faith
Crossover: CSI, Stargate Atlantis, Highlander, Anita Blake, Smallville.
Characters/Pairings: Faith in all, and none. Nope. Zip. Nadda.
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, while the other crossover fandoms belong to their respective creators. No profit has been made from this fic, and the only benefit to me is personal satisfaction and the creative process. I hope you enjoy.
Rating: PG-13 for swearing.
Words: ~2,350 total
Notes: Written for the facets_of_faith "Five Things" Challenge and crossposted there. And yes, I had to cross this.

~~~~~
Five People: Las Vegas (CSI) (set in the early days of the show)

Gris paused in unlocking his car. Had he heard something?

He hated this, his dulled hearing, not being able to trust his senses. He lifted his head and looked around the brightly lit parking lot outside of the CSI headquarters. Four in the morning in Las Vegas was a strange time. If he was a fanciful man, he'd have said the desperation and the hard luck permeated the air.

But Gil Grissom was not a fanciful man.

He scanned the parking lot one more time. The area was empty, still.

He shook his head and went back to his car.

The desert dust covering the vehicle dulled the reflection in the glass, but Gris caught the movement, the arc of a hand reaching for him. Instinct took over, and Gris threw himself to the side, turning at the same time. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the reaching arm dissolve into dust.

A girl, younger than Sara and dressed for a night on the town in Vegas, stared at him through a cloud of settling dust. She whipped one hand behind her back, but not before Gris saw the stick of wood in her hand.

She grinned up at him, face illuminated by the overhead lights. "Hey, you good?" she asked. He read her lips easily.

"I'm fine," he said, while trying to process what he had just seen. "Are you..."

"Sure is dusty here in Vegas, right?" the girl interrupted. "Later."

She turned on her heel and sauntered off, disappearing into the darkness.

Gris watched her go. He must have imagined the reaching arm. It wouldn't be the first time his eyes played tricks on him after so long in the office.

He just wished he knew where that cloud of dust had come from.

~~~~~
Five People: Colorado Springs (Stargate Atlantis)

Elizabeth sat at the bar in the best pub in town, according to Jack O'Neill, and stared at her first martini in a year.

She was not scowling, she told herself, just concentrating. She had spent all day arguing with military brass, to no avail. She was still the head of the Atlantis Expedition, and she was not going back without John Sheppard as the military commanding officer. It was that simple. She knew that.

All she had to do was convince his superiors of that, but it was like trying to shovel sand with a sieve.

"Family trouble?"

Elizabeth looked up. The young woman seated next to her at the bar was giving her a sympathetic look. "I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, I don't mean to pry," the stranger said, blushing delicately. She smiled at Elizabeth. "You seem preoccupied."

Elizabeth found herself smiling back. "You could say that."

The woman nodded. "It would be nice if things were just fixable with a thought, you know?"

"I know." Elizabeth wondered why she was getting such a strange vibe off the woman. Maybe it was spending so long in another galaxy. Or maybe it was all those years dealing with international diplomats. She knew when someone was hiding something from her. Still, it was just a simple conversation. She would make some small talk with someone not involved in the Stargate project, and leave. "Some days, I wish--"

Elizabeth cut herself off as another woman appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the first woman's shoulder, hard. "Hey, Hallie," the second woman said. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Faith," the first woman, Hallie, hissed. "What do you want?"

Faith shrugged, tightening her grip on Hallie's shoulder. "Just making your life miserable."

Hallie twisted away and glared at Faith, something ugly on her face. "Why did you interrupt this one? It would have been a beauty! My performance review--"

"Don't care," Faith said bluntly. Her eyes flickered down the necklace hanging on Hallie's neck, then she smiled.

Hallie blanched and slid off her chair. Without another word, she vanished into the crowd.

Elizabeth frowned. She really had vanished into the crowd. How?

Faith tossed her hair back. "Little free advice?" she said to Elizabeth. "Don't wish out loud."

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

Faith shrugged. "You know that old saying, right?" She turned and walked off.

Elizabeth watched her go, before turning back to her martini. She knew that saying. She had never given much credence to old sayings, but that was before she had spent a year fighting a life-sucking enemy in another galaxy.

Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.

~~~~~
Five People: Seacouver (Highlander)

As Joe backed down the alley, he reflected that thinking he was too old for this should be laughable. After all, what was forty-odd years when a thousand-year-old Immortal was coming after your head?

In reality, it wasn't funny at all.

"You have been tracking me!" the man snarled, one hand going into his coat for a sword. Joe couldn't remember what the man was calling himself these days, or when he'd last used the name William Gerald, or if calling him that now would piss him off more.

"You've got the wrong man," Joe said, trying to bluff the crazed Immortal. "I don't even know you."

"That's a lie!" William shouted, pulling out his sword.

This had been a part of Watcher training, what to do when faced with an Immortal. For the life of him, Joe couldn't remember how it was supposed to go, some stupid document written by a cloistered Watcher who never met an Immortal in his life. As he took another step back, his prosthetic leg landed wrong and he was dumped on his ass. All he could think was how embarrassing it was going to be, to die flat on his ass in a dark alley over a case of mistaken identity.

Then a brick hit William in the head.

"Hey, sunshine!" a female voice called. Another brick sailed past William's ear. "What's with the knife?"

William whirled around, sword naked in his hand. "This does not concern you!" he shouted.

Joe's savior walked forward, with what looked like a crowbar in her hand. Was she another Immortal? William certainly wasn't reacting like she was. "Yeah, do I look like I care?"

William started to move toward the woman, but froze after one step. He looked around in such a familiar fashion that Joe felt like cheering.

Another Immortal was around.

Sure enough, just in time, MacLeod appeared at the end of the alley. "Leave them alone, Gerald!" A glint of silver caught the light as Mac drew his sword.

The woman turned to see the newcomer, and when she looked back at Joe and Gerald, she rolled her eyes. "Oh, sorry, is this like a thing?" she asked, sarcasm thick in her voice. "You all whip out your swords and give each other a poke in the alley?" She circled round Gerald to Joe's side. "Didn't know we were in that part of town."

Tossing the crowbar to her other hand, she grabbed Joe's arm and hauled him to his feet so quickly he barely had time to grab his cane off the ground. "We should get out of here," Joe said, his brain finally catching up. If Gerald and Mac got into a fight, and one of them won, the resulting Quickening would be intense. And impossible to explain.

"Hey, I'm all about that," the woman said, hauling him away from the circling Immortals. He stumbled over the darkened road. "Man, what's wrong with your feet?"

"Don't have any," Joe said through gritted teeth. The jolts from the prosthetics were more jarring that usual, with the adrenaline and those near-death moments.

"Oh." The woman loosened her grip on his arm. "Sorry."

"It's fine." Once they were out of the alley, Joe settled himself on his cane, shrugged out of her grip, and made himself walk along as if nothing unusual had happened. "About that back there..."

When the woman smiled, it knocked half a decade off her face, and it made her beautiful. "Take it from me," she said, still smiling, "Some boys take the whole Dungeons and Dragons thing way too serious." She took a few steps away. "You good?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." And damned if she wasn't inching back towards the alley. "Hey, you shouldn't--"

"Hey, just carrying on my day," the woman said. If she hadn't been holding a crowbar like it was an accessory, he still wouldn't have believed her. "Later."

Then she was gone, before Joe could even ask her name.

His life was very strange.

~~~~~
Five People: St. Louis (Anita Blake)

Zerbrowski didn't even think when the little punk ahead of him in line pulled a gun on the convenience store cashier. There were a few confused moments of shouting and movement, then Zerbrowski was staring over his service revolver down the barrel of the kid's gun.

He was suddenly very glad he'd been the one to drive to the store to get milk for dinner instead of his wife.

"I will fucking kill you, man!" the punk yelled, his hands shaking.

"Put the gun down and get on your stomach," Zerbrowski ordered. His eyes never left the kid, but he knew exactly how many people were in the store, in the line of fire. A couple of little kids by the candy rack. A woman with a baby by the hotdogs. The cashier. A young woman by the slurpee machine.

"No fucking way!" the punk shouted.

"Listen to him, kid," the woman by the slurpee machine said. Hands where they could be seen, she moved slowly across the floor.

"Don't call me a kid!" he yelled, gun still aimed at Zerbrowski's chest, but shaking so badly that Zerbrowski wondered if it might go off by accident.

Then the woman snorted, as if she didn't seem to notice the punk's shaking gun. "You're what? Fourteen?"

"Eighteen!"

"Fourteen," she said again. "Look, idiot, it ain't worth it. Put it down."

"Don't you call me an idiot, stupid bitch!"

She shrugged. "I'm not the one pointing a gun at a cop. What do you think'll happen if you kill a cop? Think you'll get an easy ride?" She slid a step closer.

"What the fuck do you know?"

"I know attempted robbery gets you a few years on the inside. You kill this guy," and she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Zerbrowski, "You're in there for good."

"So?" The punk stuck his chin up in the air. Zerbrowski could taste his indecision in the air. He desperately wanted to tell the lady to shut the hell up, but as long as the punk's attention wasn't on him, he might have an advantage if he had to fire his gun.

The woman rocked back on her heels. "You got a mother?"

"Don't you talk about my momma!" The punk swung his gun around to the woman.

Zerbrowski took better aim at the kid's chest, just in case.

"Okay, we'll talk about you," the woman retorted. "This isn't a game, hot stuff. It doesn't fade to black after the credits roll, and shit moves on. This right here, this is forever."

The kid started shaking again.

"You think I don't know?" she asked.

"Put the gun down," Zerbrowski said again in his cop voice. "Now!"

After the longest moment of Zerbrowski's life, a moment in which he imagined the teenager's blood all over the magazine rack, a bullet hole through his ribcage, the kid lowered the gun.

~~~~~
Five People: Smallville (in the early seasons of the show)

Lana walked down the darkened street towards the Talon, shivering as the autumn wind blew leaves across the pavement. She loved this time of year, the changing season, the crisp smell of the air, even the way school was so busy.

Tonight, though, melancholy pushed at her heart. She had been speaking with her Aunt Nell, about family. Lana had known her mother had experienced a wild time as a teenager. She'd known that her mother had gone "visiting family" for a year, a common fiction in small towns when teenage girls became pregnant and went away for a while, to have the baby and give it up for adoption before returning to their lives as if nothing happened.

It had been a girl, Nell said. It had taken Nell years to find that little girl, to find a name and a picture of the girl. Lana had seen that picture, had marveled at how much the girl looked like Lana herself at ten.

She'd seen another picture of her older sister, during a recent internet search. A mug shot for a murderer, darkened eyes, so different from that happy little girl. Her sister was out of prison now, having served her sentence, and had vanished into the anonymous masses of the American population. The details were sort of fuzzy, but the only people who could find out more would be Chloe or Lex. Lana didn't want Chloe to know about her sister.

And if Lex found out... Lana didn't know why, but she couldn't quite trust Lex Luthor.

Lana shook her head, and walked faster. Her life was moving in strange directions these days. She had to go over the Talon books once more before the accountant came, and then she had three chapters of reading before class tomorrow. Luckily, tomorrow was Friday, and the first football game of the month at the high school. It would be a chance to relax, and forget the hectic pace of her life for a few hours.

Ahead, the shadows from the empty lot between buildings stretched across the sidewalk. Unconsciously, Lana walked faster.

She was almost at the edge of the lot when she heard a scuffling behind her, like fists on flesh in the dark. Heart in her throat, she whirled around.

The night fell silent. Then someone was coming out of the shadows. Lana backed up some more, until the wall at her back stopped her.

The person stepped into the light, and Lana stopped breathing for a second. Even though she'd never seen that face in her life, she knew who it was.

"Faith?"

Faith gave Lana a wry, tired smile. "Hey, little sister."

end

Comments

[houses7177.livejournal.com]

These are charming little vignettes. All entirely believable for Faith, a little bit worn, a little bit defiant, all Faith. Nicely done.

[dhark-charlotte.livejournal.com]

Brilliant as usual. I'm really starting to like Faith more and more. A well written Faith that is. Good job

[jaydeyn-sitari.livejournal.com]

While I love them all, I think St Louis has potential to be just a snippet more... :)

:)
Jaydeyn

[kira-snugz.livejournal.com]

the smallville one could be oh so much more. if you don't decide to to write it, please please please make it a challanage!

[deepfishy.livejournal.com]

Loved all of these :)
(I also really like the new panther icon)

One question - the reflection Grissom saw, was it actually Faith's arm, with the vampire's arm dusting out of the corner of his eye? Cos, you know, vampires and reflections being non-mixy things.

I agree with the comments up there that several of these could be longer stories (because tasty snacks are so more-ish, aren't they?). In summary, yayness!

[deepfishy.livejournal.com]

Huh. There's some weird formatting going on here - looks like I'm replying to kira_snugz. Is this happening to anyone else?

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked them. The icon is a promo shot from a tv show called Profiler, back in the late 1990s. I loved it so bad, it was my first foray into fandom.

Ahem.

And you know you've been writing AB vampires too long when you don't even think about having a vamp with a reflection. D'oh. It's... uh... yeah, it's Faith's arm. Totally :P

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

It might be the new layout. It looks fine to me on this end.

[deepfishy.livejournal.com]

What browser are you using? Mine's IE, which could easily be the problem...

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

I'm using Firefox.

[cissasghost.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I love that the ABverse one had nothing to do with the supernatural. Neato all around.

[child-labor.livejournal.com]

These are all really neat little snippets that would be cool as something more, though I think I'm most intrigued by the idea of Faith being Lana's sister. That could be interesting. The one with Zerbrowski was probably my favorite, though. I could definitely seeing her talking someone down like that.

These were fun. I love Faith fics.

[thekams.livejournal.com]

These were awesome! I love looks into Faith's life. It was all very...her. And the Smallville one! So much potential there (and the AB one).

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

Well, I write so much AB preternatural drama. I needed a break.

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

Faith is the awesome. The idea of Faith being Lana's sister wouldn't let me go, even though it doesn't really fit the rest. Sadly, I haven't seen SM (or SV, whatever it's called) since the end of season 2, so I'm missing a hellalotta stuff. Maybe I should make a challenge on TTH or something.

[empressvesica.livejournal.com]

Lovely and so very Faith! Hooray!

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I really am only familiar with 2 of these fandoms (3, if you count BtVS!), but I really enjoyed these, anyway.

The Highlander one was so dead-on, especially Faith's "poke in the alley" comment.

Great work!

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked! It's fun to do snippets of fics, jumping all around the place :D

If I may ask, what fandoms did you know?

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Lol, it's definitely something that I'm not good at writing... I tend to be a bit wordy.

Highlander & CSI.

[firefox1490.livejournal.com]

I wanna see more Faith. I love how you wrote her. She just seems kinda resigned and not violent but trying to make up for the things she's done. Its nice.

[feikoi.livejournal.com]

Of course they're all awesome, but the last? That jumpstarted the plot bunny farm. *grins* Faith as Lana's sister...

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

Oh, loved the Smallville, AB and Highlander ones. I'd love to see Zerbrowski interacting with Faith, or Big Sister Faith "teaching" little Sister Lana (and just think of all Faith could teach her little sister!) Or how about Faith annoying the helloutta Duncan. I like Duncan, really I do! But he's such a bloody big boy scout he's fun to annoy! Can't you just see Faith annoying him until he bangs his head on the table/bar/steering wheel?

More please!
(^_^)/
BEM

[mhalachaiswords.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked them! The "Big Sister" thing keeps popping into my head, but I haven't watched Smallville in years so I have no idea where Lana is now. I hear that she might be in over her head, though, so it might be good timing.

Faith v. Duncan would be a wonderful idea. I think we know who would win :D

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Faith! \(^0^)/ Whoo-hoo! You go girl! (Meaning Faith.)

And why do I want to add "Sexually harass that Scot for me!" to that?

(^_^)/
BEM