Chapter Text
“It’s just, different, you know? A picnic,” Buffy gushes to Willow. Her roomie is still pretty down about the whole Oz leaving thing, so Buffy invited her on patrol. Killing things always makes Buffy feel better! Though Willow will only really get to watch…Whatever, company is still of the good and much better than wallowing. “First of all, daylight—kind of a new venue, Buffywise. And the best part—he said he would bring all the food, so all I have to do was to show up and eat. Those are two things I’m really good at.”
Willow smiles. “So he’s nice?”
“Very, very,” Buffy says. She tries to ignore the part where that’s about as much as she can say about Riley. He’s…nice. And she might be a little bit more excited about the daytime and the cheese he promised than the “date” part of things.
“And there’s sparkage?” Willow asks.
Crap. Now Buffy has to think of something else nice to say about Riley. “Yeah. He’s—have you seen his arms? Those are good arms to have.”
And they are. They’re all muscly like he works out or something. He’s nice. And he has good arms.
“I really like him,” Buffy continues. She wonders if Willow realizes that she’s trying to convince herself as much as she is Willow. “I do.”
“But…?” Willow prods her. Yep, Percepto-girl.
Buffy sighs. “I don’t know. I like being around him, you know? And I think he cares about me…but…I just…feel like something’s missing.”
Like actual sparkage, for one. She tries to imagine kissing Riley. It’s like trying to imagine kissing Gallant from those old Highlights comics. He’s like, too wholesome to be true.
(When she was a kid, Buffy always felt bad for how Goofus would get shamed for just, like, normal kid stuff. Like, so what if his room was messy? Goofus at least seemed like he might be fun to hang out with. Like he’d sit with you in the back of the room and make fun of Gallant for being such a suck up.)
“He’s not making you miserable?” Willow suggests.
And, ouch. Direct hit, Buffy’s battleship is sunk. She loves Angel. She still wishes they could be together. But they’ll stick to the plan. Keep away from each other, and maybe one day it’ll hurt less. But no matter how much they loved each other, they were not so much with the happy, like, ever. And Parker and her had lots of sparkage. She thought he’d cared about her, too, thought they were connecting. That it meant something, sleeping with him. Instead he acted like she was a needy, clingy, naive little girl for expecting more from him. And maybe she was naïve. But he was a jerk. Riley, though… “Exactly. Riley seems so…solid. Like he wouldn’t cause me heartache.”
“Get out. Get out while there’s still time!” Willow says in mock-horror. And yeah, it’s a good point, like, she’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to associate love with nothing but misery and heartache. But isn’t there something in between “solid” and “good arms to have” and “nice” and “my boyfriend tried to end the world”?
“I know. I have to get away from that ‘bad boy’ thing,” Buffy sighs. Angel is not so much with the bad boy thing as the sad boy thing, except when he’s Angelus. And then “bad boy” doesn’t exactly cut it. Spike is more of a bad boy than Angel ever was. Not that she’s interested in dating Spike. But anyway, Angel plus Buffy is of the bad. “There’s no good there. Seeing Angel in LA, even for five minutes…hello to the pain.”
Is it so hard to find someone who is hot and has sparkage and is fun and makes her happy and won’t be freaked out about the whole Slayer package? Angel left so she could be with someone “normal,” but how can she fit someone normal into her life without telling them who she is? And if they found out, they’d be in danger all the time. It was the whole reason she broke up with Owen-the-cute-poetry-guy in the first place.
“The pain is not a friend,” Willow says sadly.
“But I can’t help thinking—isn’t that where the fire comes from? Can a nice, safe relationship be that intense?” Buffy asks. “I know it’s nuts, but…part of me believes that real love and passion have to go hand in hand with pain and fighting.”
That’s when patrol finally decides to be fruitful, and a vampire jumps out at them, thinking he found a couple of tasty snacks. Instead, he finds Buffy’s stake, which she stabs into his chest without looking at him.
“I wonder where I get that from,” she wonders as he dusts.
Willow looks pointedly down at the vampire dust. Oh. Huh.
Buffy shrugs uncomfortably. She can’t help but think of that time Faith was all “Doesn’t slaying make you hungry and horny?” and Buffy flat out lied to her friends.
“Anyway, enough about me,” Buffy says, suddenly aware of just how long they’ve been talking about Buffy’s potential new relationship when Willow is still mourning the end of her last one. “What’s new in Willow world that I should know about?”
“Mom wants me to swing by the house tomorrow for a mini, early Hanukkah dinner thing,” Willow says with a grimace.
“Hanukkah? Already?” Buffy frowns. “Wait does that mean no latkes and kugel this year? Boo!”
“Sorry. I’ll try to bring some leftover kugel back for you! A-and it starts Friday, but she’s got a conference in Boston and she and Dad are both going to have the whole New England fall/winter thing,” Willow says. “She’s been complaining about missing the seasons again, like she’s not the one with tenure at Crestwood. Dad can practice anywhere.”
“Well, much luck on the solo family time,” Buffy says. “You sure you don’t want some moral support?”
“No, I don’t think so, but thanks,” Willow replies. “I haven’t told them about Oz yet, and their celebration is going to be one for the ages.”
“Wait, they don’t like Oz? I thought everyone liked Oz,” Buffy says. “I mean, he’s the most chill dude I’ve ever met. And like, he’s hella smart, right? I would think your mom would be all over that.”
“He’s not ‘ambitious enough,’ apparently, and I think Mom thinks I picked UC Sunnydale cause of him, and not, you know, helping you with the slaying, which she is in full denial about,” Willow sighs. “And he’s a musician, and he’s all with the dyeing his hair. Mom thinks it’s all just a rebellious phase but Dad keeps muttering about how people with tattoos can’t be buried in Jewish cemeteries.”
“Oz doesn’t have any tattoos, I thought,” Buffy says, trying to think. With how often Oz changes his hair color, it’s hard to imagine him choosing to mark his skin permanently like that.
“He doesn’t, but either Dad doesn’t believe me or he thinks it’s just a matter of time,” Willow says as she rolls her eyes.
Buffy looks up and realizes they’ve looped all of Pine Rest. “What do you say we go back to the dorm and fortify you ahead of tomorrow’s onslaught? I have Phish Food in the mini-fridge I’d be willing to share.”
“I think,” Willow links her arm with Buffy’s, “this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
~~~
Being home is weird, in that “nothing has changed but everything feels different” kind of way, so maybe it’s her that changed. She flops on her bed and the first thing she sees is a picture on her night table of her and Oz after the prom holding their Pez dispensers. They look so happy.
It was all a lie. There’s no candy left in her dispenser.
The last time she was home, she still had a boyfriend. So that’s different, too. The perma-lump that’s lived in her throat since Oz left tightens and she scrubs her eyes. The last thing she wants is for her mom to realize she’s been crying. She can practically hear her launching into some speech about the development stages or something and dismissing Willow’s feelings entirely as just some psychological quirk of the human mind.
“Willow, honey, what are you doing in here?” Mom asks, coming into her room unexpectedly. Willow had thought she was still on campus, life of a professor and all. “I need your help with the potatoes if we’re going to eat at a reasonable time.”
“Yeah, okay, Mom,” Willow says quietly. She follows her mom out into the kitchen and settles onto a stool at the island as she gets to work on peeling potatoes. She tries not to feel like Cinderella. It’s not like Mom isn’t helping cook, and latkes are a ton of work. She always helps make the latkes.
“So, how do you like your roommate?” Mom asks as she tries to assemble the food processor. She pretty much only uses it for latkes and she can never remember how it fits together. “What was her name again?”
“You have to turn the handle the other way,” Willow reminds her, and Mom flips it back the other way and voila, everything clicks into place.
“Oh, right. I hope you’re making new friends and not just spending all your time with that Bunny Summers girl,” Mom says. She starts sorting through loose parts, looking for the grater. “Let’s see, which of the plates was it?”
“Here, it’s this one,” Willow says, suppressing a sigh as she hands over the grater disk. “Um, I’m actually living with Buffy now. My first roommate kept partying all the time in the dorm and it was too loud and I couldn’t sleep or study, so when her roommate left, I moved in with her. It’s a lot better now, actually.”
“You wouldn’t have had that problem if you’d gone to Harvard,” Mom sniffs. Which is definitely not true. Willow had done an overnight in one of the Harvard houses when her parents took her on college tours back East, and it was definitely party central on campus.
“Well, yeah, but UC Sunnydale is still a great school, and—” Willow begins, her potato peeling getting a little aggressive.
“No, honey, not like that, you’re taking off too much of the potato with the skin,” Mom scolds her. “It’s that Oz, he’s a bad influence.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore since he’s gone,” Willow mutters as her heart twists in pain. She didn’t mean to say anything yet, but it just sorta came out. She cringes and hopes Mom’s selective hearing will kick in, but no such luck.
“Oh, that’s wonderful news, honey!” Mom practically squeals, coming around the kitchen island to hug Willow tightly. Willow sits there, frozen, the potato peeler in one hand and a potato in the other. What kind of mother tells her daughter it’s wonderful news that her relationship just ended? “You know, it’s not too late to transfer for spring semester, I’ll see if I can get some applications together for you—”
“Mom! I’m not transferring!” Willow yells, interrupting her mother’s celebration.
“Don’t be silly, dear,” her mother says breezily. “Of course you’ll transfer now that that boy’s not holding you back anymore.”
“What’s all this about transferring?” Dad asks as he comes into the kitchen, probably drawn by the loud voices—a rarity in the Rosenberg house. Most of Mom and Dad’s fights are conducted via glare. “You finally ready to go to a school that deserves your caliber of intelligence, pumpkin?”
“No, I just—just because Oz and I broke up doesn’t mean I’m transferring!” Willow protests. They never listen to her. No one ever does! “I’m happy at UC Sunnydale, don’t you get it?”
“Honey, I just don’t understand this little rebellion,” Mom says. “It’s one thing to act out but to throw your future away? And you said he’s gone, so it wasn’t even worth it! A whole semester, wasted.”
“I never liked that boy,” Dad mutters. “And what kind of name is Oz, anyway?”
“You don’t even care that I’m in pain, do you?” Willow cries. She throws the peeler she was using on the cutting board. The perma-lump is squeezing tighter and she’s afraid she’s going to cry. She can’t stand the thought of her parents seeing her cry over Oz, not while they’re practically dancing at the thought that he broke her heart. “Oz was my first boyfriend, the first guy I ever loved, and all you care about is if I go to some snobby Ivy League school!”
“Oh, well, it’s natural that you’re angry. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief—” Mom starts to say.
“I’m not some stage of grief! O-or some trophy you can trot out at dinner parties, ‘oh, look, our daughter went to Harvard!’ I’m a person, w-with feelings, and wants and desires,” Willow cries. And now it’s too late and the tears are coming. “Forget the latkes, I’m going back to the dorm. At least Buffy cares that I just got my heart broken!”
Willow runs for the door, ignoring her parents’ protests as she goes.
~~~
“What about a truth spell?” Willow suggests to Giles. She had run into Buffy on her way back to the dorms and accompanied her over to the Watcher’s apartment. Buffy was on vampire-sitting duty which at the time had sounded a lot better than sitting alone in their room crying or listening to her parents try to convince her to transfer for the next three hours. But after hearing Spike and Buffy’s weird bickering from the bathroom, where Spike is chained to the bathtub, now she’s not so sure. God, they sound like they’re five. Or like they’re seconds from tearing each other’s clothes off, but that’s way too ooky to think about. “I’m not positive it would work on a vampire, but we could try. Make him fess up?”
“A truth spell, of course,” Giles says sheepishly. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Willow grins at him and hands him the book she found the spell in. “Cause you had your hands full with the undead English patient?”
“Yes…” Giles says, perusing the book. “We’ll have a go.”
“Looks pretty simple. I’ll stop by the magic shop tomorrow,” she says. It feels good to have a plan, to be helping. No matter what her mom and dad think, this is why she stayed in Sunnydale. To help Buffy. And helping is definitely better than moping alone in her room.
“Excellent,” Giles says.
“All right, I’ll be back tomorrow with donuts and motherwort,” she says cheerily. “Bye, Buffy, I’ll see you at home!”
~~~
The next day, her mom calls three times before noon and sends ten emails with applications to different colleges, all elite colleges thousands of miles away from the Hellmouth. It’s like her parents want to get rid of her! It’s too much, and she flees for class.
After, she means to go to the magic shop, she really does. But the walk takes her right past Oz’s house. And after the awful not-dinner with her parents yesterday and her mother’s current campaign to make Willow into the kind of daughter she wishes she had, Willow kind of could use some comforting. And his room is full of Oz-smell, which is way of the comforting.
So she decides to duck in. Just for a couple of minutes. So she can forget this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. And then she’ll go to the magic shop and go help Giles with the spell.
But when she steps into the empty room, she forgets all about truth spells and bathtub-vampires and commandos. Everything is gone except the furniture that belongs to the school. Not even a smelly old sock under the bed.
Oz is gone.
And he’s not coming back.
~~~
“I feel like I’ve been split down the center and half of me is lost,” Willow sobs into her pillow. Buffy is sitting cross-legged on her own bed across from her.
“I know,” Buffy says. “It feels like that now…”
She’s not listening! God, Willow is broken inside, and Buffy just sits there, telling her to “feel better”? “Oz is gone. ”
And he’s not coming back. Willow wasn’t enough for him. She couldn’t keep him…why couldn’t she have made him stay?
Buffy tries to comfort Willow more, but it’s all just empty words. Buffy just wants her to shut up and move on, she doesn’t really care how Willow is doing. Willow thinks about how much time she spent listening to Buffy whine about stupid Angel, and she buries her face deeper into her pillow as she sobs.
~~~
The picnic is…fine. Before Willow crashes, anyway, and somehow makes browning apples into a metaphor for life and woe and sadness. Way worse than ants. But Riley convinced her to go for a drive with him for a second date, even, and Buffy still thinks it sounds like the weirdest date ever. Like…a car? And no destination? Just…why?
The Bronze is a lot more fun, until it turns out Willow is drowning her sorrows in light beer and starts saying nasty things to Xander.
“I just can’t stand feeling this way,” Willow whines. As if no one else has ever had break up pain, as if none of them can understand her right now. “I want it to be over.”
“It will,” Buffy says patiently. “I promise. But it’s gonna take time.”
And who knows that better than her when she can’t even see Angel without pain? At least he and Oz both had the decency to leave town. Parker may have hurt her pride more than her heart, but she still hates seeing his smug face all over campus.
“Well, that’s not good enough!” Willow says, and c’mon! Buffy tries to remind herself that Willow is hurting, and drunk, but it’s hard to stay patient and supportive when Willow is practically throwing a tantrum on the floor at this point.
“I know. It’s just how it is,” Buffy says. “You have to go through the pain.”
“Well, isn’t there some way I can just make it go away? Just cause I say so? Can’t I just make it go ‘poof’?” Willow cries desperately. As if. If there was a way, someone would have figured out a way to sell it and be a gazillionaire right now.
~~~
Willow tosses and turns half the night before she finally gives up. She should have thought of this weeks ago. She can make her feelings go poof!
The spell is intense, and she’s kinda surprised none of the smoke alarms in the bathroom go off when the candle flames get all huge and intense.
But it’s not until the next morning that she realizes the spell somehow failed.
“It is my will that my heart be healed...now!” she says. But nothing happens. And the book doesn’t speak its words to her, and the Q-Tip remains decidedly bent.
What a lousy stinking day. Again.
And, oh great, now Giles is here to make it even worse and be all judgmental. She knows what she’s doing! So, okay, the spell failed, but it’s not like she’s a total incompetent! And he’s telling her she shouldn’t be casting spells? And pretending he understands about her broken heart?!
“I can see that you could feel that way, I do—”
“No, you don't. You say that you do, but you don't see anything!” Willow shouts, and she would have sworn she felt a rush of power, but that makes no sense so she ignores it. Whatever. Giles is leaving now, which is of the good. She throws herself on her bed and starts to cry again.
~~~
“Spike escaped,” Buffy says after she hangs up with Giles.
“A-and you’re going? Now?” Willow pouts at her.
“Sorry. Duty thing,” Buffy says. A tiny part of her is relieved for the excuse to go, but mostly she’s annoyed at Spike. Ingrate. He’s got it so good with them, after all, she hasn’t staked him yet or anything! And she’s practically handfeeding him his stupid blood. So what if she taunted him a little bit with her neck today? Any other Slayer would have staked him when he showed up harmless. And it’s not like any of the demons in this town would have taken in a toothless vampire. She starts packing some stakes into her bag.
“Well, I mean, what’s the rush? Spike can’t hurt anyone, right? And I figured since I’m kinda grieve-y, we could, you know, have a girl’s night,” Willow pleads. “We could eat sundaes and watch Steel Magnolias and you can tell me how at least I don’t have diabetes.”
“Will, I can’t hang out with you until Spike gets back to Giles, you know that,” Buffy says. It’s been a long time since Willow didn’t understand the whole sacred duty thing. Honestly, sometimes she seems more responsible about it than Buffy is herself. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”
Willow mutters something as Buffy closes the door behind her, but she doesn’t quite catch what it is. Whatever. She’ll figure it out later.
~~~
“Thought that was gonna take longer,” Buffy says in surprise as she stares at Spike, who is standing, looking lost, in the middle of the quad.
“Me, too,” Spike mutters. “Must’ve got…turned around…”
He’s searching along the ground for something, like he dropped something, but Buffy doesn’t have time for this. “Hang…hang on…this—this is it. Wait…no…yes…”
“What are you talking about, Spike?” Buffy snaps. She crosses her arms over her chest and taps her foot impatiently.
“The lab. Commando lab. The door was right here where I escaped,” he says, gesturing to the grass. The smooth, unbroken grass, with no sign of any kind of secret commando-base doors.
“I don’t think so,” Buffy says. She cannot believe him! Ugh, how did Spike become her problem again? Oh yeah, because she let him into Giles’s on Thanksgiving instead of staking him like she should have. And now he’s pretending he’s looking for information on the commandos—information he promised them days ago!—so he doesn’t have to go back to the bathtub. “If you’re done playing GI Joe, I actually have better things to do than babysit you, Spike.”
Sometimes being the Slayer is the literal worst.
~~~
“God, Buffy and Spike are just such children !” Willow exclaims. She feels something then, a little flash of power, which makes no sense, so she ignores it. Just like everyone is ignoring her and her pain.
“Willow,” Xander protests, but she ignores him. What does he know about things, anyway? With his stupid new relationship with stupid Anya.
“It’s just not fair!” Willow cries out before she starts pacing through his basement apartment.
“Willow, I know it’s hard to see it right now, but everything you’re feeling is because of you and Oz. Not because of Buffy and me or anybody,” Xander says, trying to be all reasonable. Who needs reasonable? She’s hurting and Oz is gone and no one is listening to her! “Eventually you’ll meet somebody else, and it’ll be better.”
At that, Willow finally understands what people mean when they say they saw red for a moment.
“Yeah, cause most relationships are great and trouble-free,” she sneers at him. “I don’t think so. I think we’re all doomed to badness.”
“We’re not doomed,” Xander protests.
“Oh yeah? Let’s look at your bio. Insect Lady, Mummy Girl. Anya. You’re a demon magnet, Xander!” Willow shouts at him. She feels a little funny again, like that surge of power from before, but she’s too angry to really notice.
“I was just trying to help,” Xander says tightly.
“Yeah, some help,” Willow snaps. “You’re just trying to get rid of me to spend time with Anya. Fine. I know when I’m not wanted.”
She lets the door slam behind her on her way out.
~~~
Buffy watches as Spike falls to his hands and knees, snarling and tearing at the grass. “Open up! I’m gonna kill you!”
“Spike, there’s nothing there!” she snaps.
“Let me in!” he shouts. His voice breaks then. “Fix me…”
“Okay, that’s enough of that act,” Buffy says, and grabs him by the arm. That’s when…it hits her. Something, anyway, and she stumbles and falls and tangles with Spike.
“You big jerkface!” she says, and her voice sounds kinda funny. “You tripped me on purpose! I’m gonna tell!”
He shoves her off of him and then cries out in pain. And there’s something definitely funny about his voice, too. “Who you gonna tell? The Watcher? Red?”
She sits up and looks at him. “Spike?”
There’s a little boy sitting in front of her, clutching his bleached blond head. He’s wearing black jeans and a t-shirt and a kid-size long leather black coat and not-so-big black boots and a red button down hanging open, just like Spike, only in a way smaller package. Fun size Spike. He moves his hands from his head and peeks at her with big blue eyes, just like Spike. “Slayer?”
“What happened to you?” they say at the same moment. Wait, what happened to her? Buffy looks down and sees chubby little hands and she’s way closer to the ground than normal. At least their clothes shrunk, too. She has a sudden horror at the idea of being naked in front of Spike.
“You’re just a little kid,” Spike sneers and then laughs so hard he falls over.
“Oh yeah?! Like you’re one to talk, you big poophead!” she yells at him.
“I’m not a poophead, you’re a poophead!” he retorts.
“Takes one to know one!” she says smugly, confident she’s won the argument.
“Ah, so you admit you’re a big poophead,” he says with an evil grin.
Stupid evil vampire! That’s it, she’s staking him, she doesn’t have to put up with this anymore! She pulls a stake out of her bag and tackles him. She didn’t remember her stakes being so big and fat before and she has to use both hands to get it in place over his heart.
“Oi! Slayer! Buffy!” he cries, and he sounds scared. Like, really scared. “No, don’t! Please!”
And then she realizes he’s really starting to cry, like tears and sobbing and everything, and she feels bad so she gets off him. She guesses she would be pretty scared, too, if he tried to kill her. Not that he could with the chip and everything. But still.
“Sorry, Spike,” she says sullenly, toeing the ground with her foot. Spike scrubs at his face with his hands. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“‘M not crying,” he says and hiccups a sob. She giggles because he so obviously is. “‘M not!”
“Sure, Spike.” She puts her stake away and plops down on the grass next to him. “How come we’re kids?”
“Dunno,” he grumbles. He pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around them, like he’s trying to make himself even smaller.
“You still have the chip,” she says. “Are you still a vampire?”
“Are you still the Slayer?” he asks and she shrugs. So, he screws his face up like he’s trying to concentrate, and there’s a crunch and yep, Spike is still a vampire. She looks closely at him. She hasn’t seen a lot of little kid vampires, just the Anointed One and boy was he a big pain in her heinie.
“Are your fangs baby teeth?” Buffy asks, delighted. She pokes at them while Spike wiggles his head and tries to avoid her fingers. But with her poking and his dodging… “Ow!”
She sticks her cut finger in her mouth, sucking on the cut, and tries not to cry. Big Girls and Slayers don’t cry.
“What the bloody hell did you expect, Slayer?” Spike grumbles, but she sees him lick his fangs, because he’s a gross vampire who is gross. “Sticking your fingers in a vampire’s mouth.”
“You said a bad word,” she points out. He rolls his eyes.
“Hello, vampire? ” he snarks. He shakes his head and his bumpies go away, yellow eyes fading back to dark blue.
“We should get back to Gileseseses,” she says, tripping over the too many Ss. “He can help us figure out what happened.”
“Do you think he’s going to make me sleep in the bathtub again?” Spike asks in a small voice, and he looks so sad she feels bad for him for a moment. But then she remembers he’s evil, so no, she doesn’t feel bad for him. She sniffs instead.
“Where else would you sleep?” she says snootily. She stands up and hauls him up after her by the arm.
That’s when Spike starts sniffing the air. He gets a really scared look on his face that looks silly with the leather coat and black nail polish and all the silver jewelry. “Slayer, we gotta hide.”
“I am not playing hide and seek with you,” she says and stamps her foot. “That’s what got us in this mess in the first place!”
“Please, Slayer,” he says, and he grabs her hand and tugs gently. She lets him pull her along behind him as he crawls into a nearby bush and they hunker down.
She’s starting to get bored and her nose itches like she’s gonna sneeze when she sees something. It’s a bunch of the commandos, and they look big. Like, really, really big.
“I’m telling you, I was picking up an HST right around here,” one of them says. He’s waving some sort of gadget thing in his hand.
“What’s a HST?” she whispers to Spike but he shushes her. Rude!
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing here now,” replies another. He sounds mean. Buffy decides she doesn’t like him.
Her nose still itches, though, and she holds it, trying to not sneeze. But it doesn’t work, and the bush they’re hiding in must shake or something when the sneeze explodes from her, or maybe they hear the achoo, because suddenly they’re being hauled out by their arms.
“Ow! You’re hurting me! Lemme go!” she cries, and at first she fake-cries, but she’s actually kinda scared and starts to real-cry which she guesses is good (even if Slayers are Big Girls who don’t cry) because her wet cheeks will look a lot more convincing.
“It’s just a couple of kids,” says the guy with the device in disgust. “Are you sure these things work?”
Spike is struggling to get away, too, and she thinks he’s maybe started to cry again. She feels a stab of guilt at the fear on his face. She told him she wouldn’t let him get caught by the commandos again, and she not only broke her promise, but it’s kinda her fault they were found.
She doesn’t like feeling guilty. Or breaking her promises. Or being hauled around by the arm by big dumb stupid commandos.
So she gets mad.
Buffy kicks the guy holding her, hard, and he lets her drop to the ground. Ow. She didn’t think that one through all the way.
“Let go of Spike! He’s mine, you can’t have him!” she yells, and gets ready to kick the guy holding her vampire, too. But then the commando who had been holding her makes a signal and the soldier lets Spike down to the ground.
The commando who had been holding her takes off his mask and squats down in front of them. He gives them a big, fake smile, and Buffy stares in shock at Riley. Riley, her TA. Who took her on a picnic and asked her to go on a drive. Nice, safe, boring Riley.
He’s a commando. He hunts and kidnaps demons and does weird things to them in some scary lab.
Huh, when her mom and teachers all said that she shouldn’t get in a car with strangers, did they mean people like Riley?
“Hey, there, kids,” he says, still giving them that big smile. His voice is all weird, too, like he thinks he’s smarter and better than them and trying to pretend he doesn’t think so. “Where are your Mommy and Daddy?”
Ugh, does he think they’re babies? He obviously doesn’t recognize her, but still. Buffy sticks her chin up in the air.
“Mommy said not to talk to strangers,” she says as she grabs Spike’s hand. He’s still sniffling a little bit, which is probably of the good. The commandos aren’t going to think a crying little boy is an evil vampire. She holds his hand tight.
She turns and starts to walk away, pulling Spike behind her, but Riley grabs her arm. She wants to pull away, but she doesn’t want him to know how strong she is, either. At least, she thinks she’s still strong. She hasn’t really gotten a chance to check. “Hey, hey, hey, kid, I’m not a stranger. It’s okay, you can talk to me.”
“Yes, you are,” she explains patiently. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, so we’re strangers. And I’m not s’posed to talk to strangers.”
I mean, duh. This is like, the first thing little kids get taught! Maybe Riley’s not as smart as she thought. And she definitely shouldn’t get in a car with him.
“Finn, c’mon, what’re you doing,” says the meanie-head. “We gotta get back to patrol.”
“It’s dangerous out here, you shouldn’t be out alone,” Riley says, ignoring his meanie-head friend and trying a different tactic. Spike is still sniffling and clutching her hand hard enough she’s surprised his chip isn’t firing. She tries to step away, but Riley is still holding her tight. She’s not sure how much of her Slayer strength she has, and she’s pretty sure that if she is still really strong, the commandos will try to kidnap her and Spike both. But she’s not sure how else to get away from him. “Come on with me, I’ll take you somewhere safe and you can call your Mommy and Daddy.”
“STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER DANGER!” Buffy yells at the top of her lungs, and then she kicks Riley in the shin, hard as she can. She hears a crack when she does and he falls backward, shouting lots of bad words. But he lets go of her, and she pulls on Spike’s arm. “C’mon, we gotta go!”
Spike doesn’t hesitate, just starts running by her side.
“Jesus Christ, those are the HSTs!” the meanie-head shouts. She can hear some of the commandos chasing after her and Spike and she realizes she’s scared. Like, really scared. These guys were able to catch Spike, and he’s the toughest fighter she’s ever faced. The crack she heard when she kicked Riley means she is strong, but she’s not sure exactly how strong. And there are a lot of commandos, and they’re all a lot bigger than her and Spike. And they have weapons. She’s not sure she even can take them in a fight.
It’s been a long time since she fought something and really thought she was going to lose. Not since Spike first rolled into town, probably.
“This way, Slayer,” Spike says and pulls on her arm. Normally, she’d probably argue with Spike, but he seems to know where he’s going so she lets him take the lead.
He darts to the side and she realizes he’s looping them back around to where they started, which is probably kinda smart, because who would look for them there?
He puts a finger to his mouth and they crawl back into the bush where they were hiding in the first place. It gets extra dark, and she’s a big girl and she shouldn’t be scared of the dark. She’s the Slayer, she goes out in the dark all the time. But this is really dark. She swallows hard so she won’t make a noise and cry. She doesn’t want to get caught by the commandos again—two of them are still there, Riley and the meanie-head—but it feels like her heart is pounding really loud and they’re going to hear it and her and Spike are going to get caught and she can’t see anything and—
Spike squeezes her hand, and it interrupts her panicking. At least she’s not alone. Even Spike is better than no one.
~~~
“You all right, Finn?” Forrest asks him, holding out his hand to help him up.
Riley tries to stand, but his leg won’t support his weight. “I can’t believe that little girl is an HST,” he mutters. Forrest gets his arm underneath Riley’s shoulder and manages to get him up. “Think she broke my shin.”
“C’mon, we gotta get you back to base,” Forrest says, and they limp toward the tunnel entrance. “We’ll worry about Wednesday and Pugsley Addams later.”
Lucky they were so close to the entrance. Which makes Riley worried that those two little HSTs pretending to be kids were so close to it, too. Like they were looking for it or something. And Riley can’t shake the feeling that they look familiar, somehow, even though he knows they haven’t brought in any HSTs that look like little kids. He shakes his head. Walsh’s not gonna be happy about this.
~~~
Spike crouches deeper into the shadows as the two commandos start to move. He had called shadow to make sure they could hide better, and hopefully this time the Slayer won’t have a sneezing fit.
His time in the commando labs is a little fuzzy, but he knows he’s smelled both of these two before. And every single one of the commandos he saw while he was captive was cruel to him or some other demon. Hitting them or kicking them for no reason, shooting them with those blasters for fun. And the Slayer calls him the monster.
He feels Buffy pull on him and he looks at her questioningly. She points after the commandos and tugs on him again, gesturing that they should follow them. He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to admit he’s scared.
“C’mon,” she whispers, quiet enough only a vampire could here. “They said they’re going back to base, we can find out what they did to you! And it’s scary in the dark.”
“But Buffy…” he says and swallows. He feels like he’s going to cry again. He hasn’t cried this much since…well, since Dru left. But this crying feels different compared to that. This feels like being little again, when the other boys used to pick on him until he cried, and then pick on him for crying. And maybe he is little again, apparently, but he doesn’t want Buffy of all people to see him cry. It’s embarrassing. They’re mortal enemies, they’re not supposed to see each other cry!
Though she hasn’t made fun of him for it once yet. And she cried, too, and he felt no desire to make fun of her for it.
It shouldn’t make him feel warm inside.
“I just called shadow, it’s not scary,” Spike says, trying to distract himself from his thoughts. And her from her loony plan to follow the soldiers.
“You did what?” Buffy whispers, her face scrunching up in confusion.
“I called shadow to me, y’know, to hide better,” Spike explains. She doesn’t look any less confused. “Christ, don’t your Watcher and Angel teach you anything about vampires?”
She looks mad for a minute, then she glances at the two commandos, slowly limping away from the bush where they’re hiding. Her anger fades into determination.
“C’mon, Spike,” the Slayer says and she grins at him. “It’ll be just like Blue’s Clues! We’ll find all the clues and solve the puzzle to why you can’t bite anymore!”
When she smiles at him like that, it makes his stomach feel a little funny and he lets her pull him out of the bushes and after the two soldiers.
Whatever Blue’s Clues is.
~~~
Buffy used to think Riley was really nice, before. He was all understanding about her getting those missing assignments and letting her turn them in late when Walsh wouldn’t. But she knows that he didn’t let Lauren make up assignments when she missed class, even though he let Buffy do it, which isn’t being fair. But then he hung out with Willow at that party when she was all sad about Oz. Willow told her Riley was all gentlemanly while he was pumping Willow for information about Buffy. Which actually maybe that’s not good. Talking to Willow about her behind her back isn’t very nice. And he told Buffy that she was hard to talk to, which is definitely not nice!
So, he’s not nice. And he’s kinda boring, what with the driving for fun thing. Like, who goes for car rides for fun? Okay, maybe dogs, she knows that her cousin Celia’s dog, Mr. Woofers, loved to go for car rides, but Buffy’s not a dog. Car rides are for going places, like the mall or the beach, or for when there’s an ermeragency slaying thing and walking will take too long. They’re not for “just cause.”
Plus she gets carsick on long car rides.
So he’s not nice. And he’s boring. Except for the part where he’s secretly a commando who does bad things to vampires. That isn’t boring, but it is bad. Probably. Okay, so, she slays demons and vampires, but that’s her job! She never wanted to do it. She kinda had to ‘cause she got chosed. And Spike always looks really, really scared, even when he was big and could hide it better, whenever they talk about the commandos. She’s kinda scared to ask what else they did to him, and what kinds of things he saw down there.
As they follow Riley and his meanie-head friend, it looks like Spike was right about the entrance being close by. They see the soldiers open a door in the grass down into a tunnel. And so now they’re going down into the commando’s labs, and she needs to be a big girl and not let Spike know she’s scared, too.
But she does squeeze his hand extra hard. You know. Just in case he’s scared and needs it.
