Disclaimer: I am not Joss. Nor am I Boss. Joss is Boss. I do not own this.

A/N: a peek at crazy-Fred, along with the Confrontation. Also, many many thanks to both readers and reviewers! Love you all!

Disclaimer: as always, Joss is Boss is Joss is Boss is not me.

A/N: many references to AngelSeason4, which is… bad, since I only watched that one once, like a year ago. So if the details are wrong, let me know and I'll change them.

Chapter 4

Faith was not pleased. Not in the least. She had had plans for this week, and none of them involved getting dragged out of her nice, warm, cozy bed back in Cleveland by Buffy Summers (newly arrived from who-the-hell-cared-where) and then getting bundled off to L.A. of all places. Stupid city. Stupid Buffy. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She had had no idea why they were heading out to L.A., which hadn't really been a surprise. B. was never really big on sharing, not with Faith anyway. It really grated that Faith, one of the Original Two Slayers Who Made Everybody Else a Slayer, had to get her information from one of the newbies. And it was extra grating because, if Buffy had just told Faith what was going on, Faith would have leaped out of bed and run to L.A. if necessary.

Angel was in trouble.

If Angel was in trouble, Faith would drop everything and anything to help. It was only fair, after all. He'd done it for her, and she owed him, big-time.

She didn't have a thing for him the way Buffy did (well, nobody had a thing for him like Buffy did), but she cared about the big dork, and, as mentioned, she owed him. So helping out however she could was a natural thing.

But Buffy, Slayer Extraordinaire, Savior of All Things Cute and Fuzzy, Beloved by Ensouled-Vampires Everywhere, Judge of All Other Slayers and Supreme Holder of Grudges, still automatically thought of Faith as the Bad Slayer, Killer of Fuzzy Puppies, Stealer of Boyfriends, etc. etc., even though she knew that Faith had changed for the better, and that Angel was, at least in part, responsible for those changes. She knew that Faith would drop everything to help Angel.

B. still thought that Angel might be evil. Which was bull, by the way. There was no freakin' way that Angel was evil. He'd put Angelus back in the box, and had thrown away the key. Angel was good, and Buffy was just being a cranky, self-absorbed bitch.

But there was another reason they were all in L.A.

Spike. William the Bloody. The Bleach-Blond Menace. The Necklace-Wearing, Hellmouth-Closing, Buffy-Loving, Clearly Burned to Ashes in the Hellmouth and Yet Somehow Alive Again Wonder.

'I must be more tired than I thought. Only possible reason my mind's gone quite so… weird, with all the Special Titles, or whatever they are'.

Somehow, Spike had come back from the dead. Well, he was still dead, since he was a vampire, but he was less dead than he had been. Or something.

'Yeah. Way more tired than I thought. Damn it I miss Cleveland.'

Anyway, now Buffy Herself had called Faith, in desperate need of someone to protect Willow from the Big Bad Vampires. Why she thought of Faith was anybody's guess.

Faith surveyed the Hyperion from the outside with interest. Last time she'd been here, Angelus really had been present and she'd been working nonstop with the 'Fang Gang' to try and bring Angel back. There was Gunn, and Fred, and Wesley (she suppressed the inner twinge of pain at the thought of her former Watcher/foe/friend/victim), and some green demon whose name she'd forgotten. She paused for a moment, confused. Had there been someone else? No. But… hadn't somebody tried to kill Angel? And she'd… tried to stop them?

She shrugged, dismissing the thought for now. She'd get back to it when she had enough spare time to breathe.

Squaring her shoulders and hefting her axe (Xander had gone on and on and on, as only Xander could, about how Gunn had been waving an axe in everybody's faces, and it had pissed Faith off so much that she'd wanted to punch the one-eyed-whelp through the phone), she walked confidently through the doors.

And immediately threw herself to one side, narrowly dodging the chair thrown at her head.

"Vermin! Pestilence! Get out! Filth! Slime! How dare you enter my presence?"

The origin of both the tirade and the chair was a tiny woman in a catsuit, standing in the center of the lobby. Faith's eyes widened. Either that Fred-girl had used so much blue dye on her hair that it had polluted her brain, or something Hellmouth-y/Wolfram-and-Hart-y/L.A.-in-general-y was going on.

Big Blue seized another chair, and threw it towards another part of the room, still shrieking that they were all worms, filthy mortal worms, and that they should cower in her presence.

"Illyria! Bloody stop it already!" a familiar voice yelled from the general area the second chair had been flung. "Don't you remember who we are?"

"You are worms! Filthy, spineless mortal worms!" Illyria shrieked, and then clutched her head in her hands. "Be silent, you babbling fool! I can get no peace! Be silent!"

Willow's head popped up from behind the lobby desk, and she held out a hand towards Illyria. "I'm sorry, Illyria. I didn't know that spell would set her off like that. I–"

Illyria screeched again, and looked around for something else to throw. "You dare to apologize? You should be on your knees, you useless mortal scum! I am the God-King of the Primordium, and I will have my due! You caused this… this noise inside my head! You are the reason she will not be silent! I have no peace! She never ceases!"

Gunn appeared a few feet behind Illyria, moving very slowly and quietly. He saw Faith, still crouching by the door, and pressed a finger to his lips in a gesture for silence. The Slayer nodded once, fascinated by the craziness going on around her.

Spike's voice came again from near the second chair. "If you'd just stop throwing things, we'd be able to fix this, right Red?"

Willow nodded vigorously, focusing on Illyria so intently that Faith was sure she'd seen Gunn, but was trying not to draw attention to him. "You just… you need to calm down, Illyria. I can help, if you'll let me."

"You cannot order me around!" Illyria screamed, clutching her head again. "I am the God-King of the Primordium! I am above this! Beyond this! Why will you not be silent, you filthy mortal worm? You are less than a worm, you… you…."

Before she could come up with more insults, Gunn sprang at her with a baseball bat in his hands, and clocked her right on the head.

For half a second, Faith thought it hadn't worked. Then the creepy blue eyes (no eyes were naturally that color, and there weren't any pupils. What the hell was wrong with this girl?) rolled up into the back of her head, and Illyria collapsed in a boneless heap on the floor.

For a few heartbeats, there was silence, and then Faith broke it with, "So that's new, huh?"

-*-

"So, it's Fred, except it's also Illyria?" Faith said half an hour later after Angel and Spike had caught her up on everything that had happened. She still seemed a bit confused, but that was to be expected in this situation. Willow knew that she was confused, and she had a better handle on what was happening than the Slayer did.

The problem was, she had no idea what to do next.

To fix this problem required a spell that influenced Frellyria's mind (she snickered inwardly at the name; she'd gotten tired of saying Fred-and-Illyria, and had blended the two names in a fit of exhaustion-fueled giggles), and spells like that required absolute control and precision.

There was no way Willow could fix this herself. She couldn't even think of any stopgap measures to buy herself time. She was better with spells relating to the material world, or at least, spells that didn't skirt dangerously close to mind control. She'd sworn that kind of thing off back when Tara –

She cut herself off abruptly. She knew better than to open that particular can of worms unless she was alone and prepared for a good, hour-long cry. Tara's loss still cut deeply, so deeply that Willow wasn't sure she'd ever recover from it, or that she wanted to. Grief like that was constant; one of the few constant things in her life these days. It let her know that she really was in the here and now, that this madness wasn't a horrible nightmare. She couldn't dream up grief this painful.

"You got any idea how to fix this?" Gunn asked, leaning on his axe.

"No," Willow sighed, running a hand through her hair. "I mean, I can sort of see what needs to be done, and I know what kind of spells to use, but… I can't."

"Why not?" Gunn frowned, shifting his grip on the axe like he meant to throw it.

Willow shifted uncomfortably. "I don't… use spells that mess with people's minds. It always ends really really badly."

Spike raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing. Willow heaved an inward sigh of relief. He knew what she meant, and she knew he knew, and he probably knew that she knew he knew… but he wasn't going to say anything. It was easier to ignore the bone-deep sense of loss if she didn't think or talk about things that she associated with it. Memory spells were very very high on that list. Right up there next to guns, Warren Mears, and skinning. All three good topics to avoid.

The others had no such reservations.

"Why not?" Gunn asked again. "From what I hear, you're a damn good witch. Messin' with people's minds should be easy for you."

Willow flinched, but merely said, "It's not."

Clearly sensing that Gunn wasn't going to let it go that easily, Spike spoke up. "You know anybody who can?"

"I don't, but I think the coven might," Willow smiled at the vampire, grateful for the save. If Gunn had kept pushing, she might have had to actually think about the fact that she was alone now, and likely would be forever. Loss of one's soulmate tends to lead to eternal solitude. Sure, there might be passing flings, like Kennedy, but nothing like –

Don't think about it. Don't remember watching her die, and the badness after that. Don't think.

"OK, so I'm going to call the coven, and I'll ask if they know someone who specializes in… magic-induced-brain-problems," Willow said. "Umm…. What about Illyria?"

"We got it," Gunn said, putting his axe down long enough to grab the ex-God by one arm as Angel took the other. "Basement cage?"

Angel nodded, and the two headed downstairs, dragging the still-unconscious Illyria between them.

-*-

Illyria's cranky. 'Snot my fault she can't hear anything over me. 'Snot my damn fault I'm stuck in her head, or she's in mine. Wish she'd stop tellin' me to shut up.

Funny thing is, when Charles smacked her over the head with the baseball bat, Illyria got knocked silly. Not me. If I wanted to, I could've taken control of the body again.

I didn't want to, though.

Don't tell anybody, but I'm scared. Scared as all get-out. I mean, I've been scared before, but not like this. Before, I was scared of monsters, or demons. Now, I'm scared of me.

Or losing me, really.

I didn't want to take control of the body. I didn't want to. It wasn't that I was scared to do it, I just didn't want to. I didn't want to take control of my own damn body. I'm scared that I'm… dissolving, I guess. What if I really fade away?

I was here all along, you know. When Illyria was doin' the time-warp thing, when she killed Spike and Wes and Lorne and Angel, and when Hamilton beat the livin' shit out of her, and when she was fightin' off the apocalypse with Gunn 'nd Angel 'nd Spike. I was there. Or here. I was in the back corner of her mind. And what I wanted most was to kick her out and exist again.

Now I had the chance, and I didn't want it. Well, I couldn't have kicked her out for good, but I could've shoved her back.

I didn't feel this before. Not really, I mean. When there were lots of people around, and they were all babblin' at me about I-don't-know-what, I didn't want to take control because then I'd have to face them. But I'd do it when I was alone. Fight Illyria off, exist for a little while. Granted, it was mostly hiding in a closet, cowering away from the world, but I had control! And yeah, I did snatch it away from Big Blue when Buffy was threatening Spike, but I'm not really sure why I did that.

Now is different.

Now I don't want control. I don't want to exist. I mean, I want it, but I don't want it. There's a difference in the levels of wanting. To want is… it's like how, when you're a kid, and you see that shiny red bike in the store, and you think, 'oh please oh please, I'll be really good, please please PLEEEEEASE can I have that bike for Christmas?'. It's like that, times a thousand. Ten thousand. Wanting becomes you. You want, and then think. Then breathe. That's pretty different from mere wanting, like 'oh, I want a snack' or 'I want it to be Friday'. And it takes wanting to snatch control. And I don't want anymore.

I'm scared that means that I'm gonna cease to exist, except for real and permanent, this time.

I want to live.

But then, I don't know if I want to live.

And there's a whole mess of difference there.

-*-

A/N: erm. OK, this is pretty odd. In my defense, though, I'm writing this at like three in the morning, and I found all the 'Special Titles', and the name 'Frellyria', really funny. I mean REALLY funny. I cracked up for a good half hour over them. If you don't think they're funny, read them at three a.m., I guarantee you'll laugh! Well, no, I don't, but you might! God I'm tired. Stupid end of spring break!