Chapter One: Meetings

Disclaimer: Own nothing and no one used herein. JKR own Lucius et al and Joss owns Faith et al. All I have is the idea.
Title: Ice Father
Author: Kate R.
Rating: FR15 or so
Summary: Faith finds a father she never knew she had and helps him rediscover in himself the warm, human man her mother loved.

Notes: Pay attention here, everyone: following what I understand from the Buffy Mythos no slayer is apparently called after the age of sixteen. This means Faith was between fourteen and fifteen when she came to Sunnydale and that made her between fifteen and sixteen in Angel hence me saying she's sixteen. I could be wrong but from what I understand this is what I got so this is the idea I'm writing it from. I'm going by the show, not the movie, here. I know Buffy was seventeen in the movie but, well, my fic and my interpretation of things. Don't like it, don't read. Also I know Faith seems a little OOC but just wait until someone insults her father. It's just here she's just getting back a father who came for her when no one has ever come back for her before and looked for fourteen years until he found her. Lucius is OOC because he's getting back someone he lost. If you wouldn't be emotional about it, I worry about you.

Now, on with the fic:

Faith had been woken early by the deputy warden and told to get up and get dressed. The clothes weren't her normal prison wear though, they were hers. And she wondered, as she followed the guards into an interrogation type room, what was going on. She sat down at the table to wait. She didn't know what she was waiting for or who, but the guards said it was a good thing and she wasn't in any trouble.

After a minute, the door opened and several people filed in. The only person she recognized was Kate 'the bitch' Lockley who had a sneer on her ugly, bow lipped face. She guessed two of the people entering were lawyers, one was maybe a judge one was the warden of this prison and one was a man she couldn't remember having ever met before but as soon as he entered the room she felt safe, protected and warm.

The man looked like ice, pure, cold ice dressed in black with a snake headed cane at his side. He was ice in his long white hair and blue eyes and pale skin in appearance but when she met his eyes she saw a fire in them. And a look of concern as he met her gaze.

"Faith," the one she guessed was a judge said, drawing her attention to himself. The man had sat down across from her and Faith took some comfort in his presence, she just hadn't a clue why at the moment. "It has come to the court's attention that your case was handled poorly and as a result, you were failed by the system. Not just in the matter that landed you here but all through your life, from the day you were placed in the foster care system. You were wronged by the system, and the court, and we'd like to make amends."

"How?" Faith asked. "How was I wronged? And how would you make amends?"

"Well," one of the lawyer type people began, "The fact that you are only now turning sixteen says that you shouldn't be here, especially not for the accidental death in Sunnydale or the self defense against men who tried to paw at you. That you were never mirandized, you never had a trial, and you had no council present when giving your statement all point to a huge failure of the system. Not to mention negligence and a grudge against someone who was trying to help you by Miss Lockley for the unfortunate death of her father that this individual had nothing to do with."

"How do you know how old I really am?" Faith asked. No one knew that, hell, her last foster mother before her watcher had found her didn't even know that. And she wasn't even sure if her watcher knew it. She'd dressed harder and older than she was for a long time before now.

"This gentleman told us," the judge spoke again, pointing to the man who was both fire and ice.

"How does he know?" she asked, looking at him, challenging him to answer her, not the judge.

"A father knows how old his child is," the man spoke softly and with the same cultured accent Giles and Wesley both had, his eyes had locked on her as he began to speak and Faith had a feeling this wasn't his normal tone, he was moderating it for her, so he didn't scare her or something. "Even after his now 'ex' wife has her kidnapped and sold on the black market after killing her mother, his first wife, so she could marry him. Even though said ex's child by said father could never be his heir because the daughter is 2 years older and from a valid marriage and therefore is his rightful and only heir."

"You're kidding me," Faith said. But then, she looked into his eyes and knew he was most assuredly not. The pain in those eyes as he looked at her, pain for things lost, things and dreams destroyed, was a tangible, palpable thing and her heart hurt for the pain in his eyes.

He took two things from his coat pocket and handed them to her. One was a birth certificate declaring her name to be Faith Solaria Malfoy, her father, the man in front of her she presumed, was listed as one Lucius Abraxas Malfoy and her mother was listed as Estella Christine Malfoy (Deceased). That had been noted next to the name so she guessed wherever he was from that sort of thing was done. The second thing was a picture of him about a decade and a half earlier even though he hadn't changed much since then, holding a little baby with dark hair and eyes. She saw the picture move but realized no one else could and in it, she saw him looking down at the baby, her she somehow knew, with a tender smile on his face and then turn as if someone called his name and smile fully and brightly.

"I have searched for you since the day you were taken and your mother killed," he told her. "And I made a serious error along the way in that search. But, by the grace of the Old Ones, that error was correctable and someone I wronged was willing to help me find you. I want you to come home with me, Faith. I want to know you, the good and the bad. But I will not force you. Whatever you decide, I just wanted you to know the truth and that I do love you. I've never stopped loving you since the day you were born."

She sat, looking at the photo for a long time before she looked up at him again. There were tears, a rare thing, in her eyes and although normally she would have scrubbed them away and denied them, somehow she knew, with his man, it was safe. He would not look down on her or think her weak for them. He wrapped her in his arms then, offering what comfort he could give her, and she felt his chaste kiss to the top of her head while she nestled he head under his chin.

"I want to go home, Daddy," she whispered, using a very childish name for her father but for some reason not being able to think of anything else to call him, "please?"

"All right, baby," he'd soothed. She pulled back, looking up at him as he looked at the judge who nodded. She could see tears in his eyes, too, and she had a feeling tears were as rare for him as they were for her.

She watched from the shelter of his arms as her record was expunged much to Lockley's sneering dismay, and the rest of her things were brought in.

"We are sorry, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Malfoy," the judge spoke. "And you can expect letters of apology from all who were part of this travsitic farce."

"Thank you, your honor," her father spoke. He stood, taking her small hand in his gloved one, and led her out. She held on to it, wondering why he was wearing them, as he guided her out of the prison, the dark prison, into the light outside.