Rating: R for violence and dark themes.
Content: The ultimate plan of the Initiative is revealed after the Scooby Gang goes on the run to LA.
Spoilers: Everything from The I in Team and She, plus speculation for future episodes.
Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox and the WB. No copyright
infringement intended.

*****

"We're all in danger," said Buffy grimly. The group in Giles' living room watched her stumble through her explanation of Walsh's setup, of the resources and power of the Initiative.

Spike was the first to speak. "Well, I certainly hope you're proud of yourself," he said sternly. "You saw what they did to me, a supernatural creature, and you revealed yourself to be the Slayer anyway. You're going to end up in one of their cages just like I did."
 
"Your comments are always so edifying, Spike, but I believe on this occasion we may dispense with them. If they have the resources that Buffy says they do, we have no way to fight them. We are not an army, and they are," said Giles. "We have to think. This is not the time for recriminations."

"Yeah, we'll do that later, if our cages are close enough to each other," said Xander bitterly. Anya clung to Xander's arm tightly. "I watched the Salem witch trials. I saw Giles Cory crushed under a burden of rocks, taking hours to die, and now the same thing is going to happen to us if we stay here."

"We can't just run away!" exclaimed Buffy. "I'll talk to Riley, and-"

"You've done enough talking with Riley," snapped Xander. "Look where its gotten us. They know who we are. They know where we are."

As the argument escalated, voices overlapping each other, with Buffy defending Riley against Xander, Spike and Anya, Willow broke the cacophony of voices.  "We don't have time for this. Do you see my face? This is my resolve face. You've seen it before, you know what it means. We need to get out of Sunnydale and come up with a plan. Anya is right. We are sitting ducks if we stay."

Buffy tried to protest, but Willow overrode her. "No, Buffy. We can't trust Riley. He led you into the Initiative. What makes you think he wasn't in on this little assassination attempt? We can't take the chance. I hate to sound like one of the Lone Gunmen, but we could all be under their watch right now. We need to get away, find someplace safe to come up with a plan."

*****

At Angel Investigations, Wesley knelt on the floor next to a bucket. His hair was protected by a flowered bandanna, he wore an apron and a large pair of eye goggles, and there were yellow plastic gloves on his hands. He wiped at his head with his sleeve, then continued to scrub the floor furiously. He was grateful for the job, and even more grateful for the money, but he hated being the one in charge of keeping the office clean. Fighting demons meant that their office was often under attack, with broken glass everywhere. When there wasn't broken glass, there was often ooze to be mopped up, left by their clientele or sometimes the monsters who were chasing them. He told himself not to be bitter, that if business continued to increase, they would be able to afford a cleaning lady.

Angel was out on a case, and Cordelia was at home preparing for an audition. A national, no less, she had told them. Having observed Cordelia's lack of acting skills, Wesley suspected that the audition would go badly.

He didn't hear the cars pulling up outside, or the running feet. When the door opened, he looked up in horror.

Giles, Buffy, Anya, Spike, Willow, and Xander stared at him, trying not to laugh as he rose to his feet and strived for some semblance of dignity. "Can I help you?" he asked in his best British accent.

"What on earth are you doing?" asked Giles sharply.

"I work with Angel now," said Wesley simply. "I found that working for the Council did not provide enough scope for my talents as a Rogue Demon Hunter."

"Scrubbing floors does?" hooted Xander.

"You were fired, and Angel took pity on you," concluded Buffy. "Where is Angel?"

Removing his gloves, goggles, apron, and bandanna hastily, Wesley drew himself straighter. "He's out on a case, but should be back soon. What is it that you want? Cordelia told me that on your last visit to LA, you told Angel to stay out of your life in no uncertain terms." As Buffy flushed, Wesley found himself smiling a bit. "Changed your mind?"

Giles stepped forward. "We are in a bit of a bind. We need a safe place to stay while we determine a course of attack." As he described the situation to Wesley, the others scattered, looking around at the office with curiosity.

"Its late and I'm tired," said Anya bluntly. "Where can I sleep?"

"I'll call Cordelia, and see if she can take some of you in. Angel's apartment is downstairs," said Wesley, moving to the phone.

*****

Anya and Willow entered Cordelia's apartment. "This is really nice," said Willow in amazement, looking around at the tasteful furnishings. "My dorm room could fit inside your living room a couple of times." Cordelia, attired in silk pajamas and a bathrobe, beamed. As Xander crossed the threshold, something grabbed his shirt collar and the seat of his pants. He felt himself thrown by some unseen force, and the door slammed shut behind him.

As he sat, stunned, the door opened and Anya came out to help him up. He could hear Cordelia's voice scolding someone named Dennis. Xander suddenly wished he'd stayed in Sunnydale. As he re-entered the apartment, he had a bad feeling that there was more danger for him in LA than at home.

"Sorry about that, Xander. Dennis is a little overprotective," said Cordelia.

"Tell your freaky boyfriend to leave Xander alone." Anya ordered. They glared at each other.

"He's not my boyfriend," protested Cordelia.  "He's just a friend. Buffy is the one with weird boyfriends. What was she thinking when she dated Riley?"

"She thought he was a nice, normal guy," said Willow. "She wants someone in her life who can really be in her life."

Cordelia snorted, sitting down on her couch. "Why can't Buffy just be alone for awhile? She can't have a
relationship with a normal guy. Look what happened when Angel turned human. Buffy and any human guy will
just get killed, if she's lucky enough to find one that's not evil."

"Turning human?" Willow gasped.

"What are you talking about?" Xander demanded.

Cordelia looked flustered, then resigned.

*****

Buffy, Giles, and Wesley sat on chairs near Angel's library. Giles and Wesley were talking in low voices, filling each other in.

She didn't take advantage of Angel's absence to snoop around through his things. Spike happily did so on her behalf, calling out to her from time to time joyfully when he found something he liked. Buffy couldn't help but notice that Spike's overnight bag was getting much larger than it had been before they entered Angel's apartment, and she'd seen him taking some lamps and a rug out to his car. She told herself she didn't care, and went to the kitchen, ignoring Spike's latest joyous yelp of discovery.

As she had expected, there was nothing in the refrigerator but blood. She looked in the freezer with faint hope, and found a container of ice cream, to her surprise and delight. Grabbing a spoon, she launched herself into it, gobbling down the cookie dough fudge mint chip ice cream greedily. She hadn't realized how hungry she was.

When footsteps sounded on the stairs, there was a flurry of sound from Spike zipping up his bag. Spike came into the kitchen, sitting down next to Buffy. "He doesn't need all these things, and I do," said Spike defiantly meeting her gaze. "It will all look so much better in a minimalist area like my crypt." Smoothing her hair, she hurried towards the footsteps, freezing with horror when she saw him. It was Riley, not Angel, who had come in. His skin had turned quite green, and little horns were emerging from his forehead and arms. "Buffy, you killed Professor Walsh," he accused. "No, I didn't. She tried to kill me!" Buffy exclaimed.

"She's dead, and you were the one who killed her, and the entire project has been damaged. We were supposed to morph slowly, but without our injections from Walsh, its happening fast now, really fast," said Riley slowly, wiping his sweaty forehead. Spike and Buffy watched in horror as his hair fell out in a little pile around him.

"I don't know what the hell he is," said Spike, "but you stake him and I'll cut his head off." He rushed away for weapons, but Buffy found herself frozen before Riley, the man she'd slept with twenty-four hours earlier.

"For the good of humanity, I volunteered to become a demon hybrid to fight the Apocalypse, and now, you've ruined everything. Its happening really fast, and only Walsh knew the exact demons we were turning into, and how to control the process so that we retained something of our human nature. Now, its out of control. I followed you here. I'm going to bring you back in a cage," said Riley coldly as he advanced on Buffy reaching out to choke her. Buffy fought his grip, but he was amazingly strong. Giles and Wesley ran to her defense, and were thrown into walls for their trouble. Buffy tried to scream to them, to tell them to get up, but she had no voice. They were unconscious. Suddenly, Spike ran up and plunged a
sword into Riley's heart. He fell, and Buffy was left gasping. Spike kicked Riley's body repeatedly, giggling happily as he did so and dancing a jig in between kicks.

*****

Footsteps were heard again on the stairs. Angel came in, looking at them and at Riley's body impassively. Buffy felt her heart leap at the sight of him. He led Buffy into the kitchen, ordering Spike not to mutilate the body. Giles and Wesley, regaining consciousness, joined them.

"Did you see me? Did you see me?" rejoiced Spike. "I'm so happy," he concluded, with tears in his eyes.

Buffy told Angel what Riley had told her. Wesley and Giles listened intently, polishing their respective pairs of glasses with their respective handkerchiefs.

When Riley burst into the kitchen and attacked them again, none expected it. Swiftly, Buffy grabbed a knife from the countertop behind her and slashed Riley's throat. He staggered back, collapsing. The group watched silently as he stopped breathing, then stared at Spike accusingly.

"I really thought he was dead!" Spike said furiously at the unspoken criticism.

Angel took Riley's body and slung it over his shoulder. "I don't want a dead body here; I know we need to study it and figure out what kind of demon he was, but that can be done in the sewers." He dropped the body through the trapdoor to the sewer below, and stood looking down at it for a minute before he shut the trapdoor. Buffy tried to meet his eyes, but he
wouldn't look at her, and in her heart, she realized that Angel had been keeping tabs on her, and knew that she had been involved with Riley. Her heart sank.

*****

Cordelia was furious. She had a hard time sleeping the night before an audition anyway, and having Willow, Anya and her ex camped out in her living room did not make anything easier. She hated to admit it, but she was worried about them. Ever since the Scourge had killed Doyle, she found herself becoming more concerned with the people around her instead of concentrating only on herself. Knowing she couldn't sleep unless she checked on them, she got up.

Entering the living room, she saw Xander and Anya rolled in their blankets, and Willow asleep on the couch. There was something on Xander's face. Clutching her robe around her tightly, Cordelia moved closer to Xander and saw that someone had drawn glasses and a mustache on him with a black magic marker.

"Dennis!" she hissed, exasperated but pleased. She stood watching her friends sleeping for a few minutes, watching their faces, wondering what had been going on in their lives since she'd left. They hadn't had much of a chance to talk. She had figured out that Oz was gone, and that Xander was dating Anya. Cordelia looked at the sleeping girl, and told herself it wouldn't last.

As she headed back to the phone, she heard the sound of breaking glass. A green monster of some kind had thrown itself through the window and was doing its best to choke Willow to death. Grabbing a poker from the fireplace, Cordelia launched herself. She beat on it with the poker, until it released its grip on her.

As Xander and Anya staggered up from their blankets, they saw what was happening and attacked the monster with their fists. Suddenly, the monster was lifted up and thrown into a wall. They heard its neck break, and saw it collapse, lifeless.

"Thank you, Dennis," said Xander gratefully.

"You won't thank him when you look in a mirror," said Anya with a smile.

"Is he dead?" Willow whispered, rubbing her throat and coughing. They looked at the body, covered with spiky green scales, the horns, the long, serrated tail that emerged from its shoulderblades that carried a club at the end. It twitched, moved.

As one, Xander, Anya, Willow and Cordelia ran out of the apartment, Cordelia grabbing up her car keys. "I always knew Buffy was nothing but trouble," she complained as she led the way to her car.

*****

They reached Angel's apartment, and told what had happened. Buffy and Angel moved to the trapdoor and looked. The body was gone.

"How does he keep coming back to life?" Wesley mused. "There aren't many demons who have those regenerative powers.

"A mohra demon does," said Buffy and Angel. Buffy looked away as Angel continued. "A mohra demon has a jewel in its forehead, and Riley doesn't. He may be partly mohra demon, and it will be hard to figure out how to permanently kill him, since there is no jewel on him to target."

"So we can kill him over and over until we do find a way?" Spike's eyes lit up, and he looked terribly pleased. "The next time he shows up, I'm going to tie him up and hit him with a baseball bat until he bursts."

"I'm going to set him on fire with one of my spells," said Willow grimly.

"No way, I haven't got to kill him at all yet," Xander protested. "Its my turn when he shows up!" He grabbed a mace from the wall behind him and stood ready to defend his rights.

"Everyone will get a turn," said Giles firmly, picking up an axe. "There is no need to squabble."

As the words left his mouth, Riley burst down the stairs, running towards them. His face had become almost unrecognizable as having once been human. His nose had fallen off, leaving him with slits, his eyes had become purely pupils, with no color remaining.

"Ladies first," purred Spike, waving Willow forward.

As Willow chanted, Riley burst into flames and collapsed. Within minutes, he rose again. The entire group entertained themselves for the next hour by thinking of new ways to kill him. During that period, the creature that once was Riley was killed in a variety of ways, but none of them took: he was beheaded, cooked, frozen, beaten to death, choked, run over, electrocuted, stabbed, shot, hanged, chopped into pieces, guillotined, poisoned, dismembered, drowned, and forced to watch Dawson's Creek.

"The problem isn't killing him. The problem is, he's not permanently dead, and most of the Initiative members are just like he is. Almost impossible to permanently kill, amazingly strong. If they stay in groups, we can't take them down, unless we have an army of slayers," said Buffy dispiritedly.

"An army?" Angel mused, moving to the phone.

*****

The clash between the Initiative and the Scourge was a terrible thing to watch. The Scooby Gang had tied Riley underneath Angel's car and driven back to Sunnydale, one step ahead of the Scourge, who had been alerted by LA's equivalent of Willy the Snitch to the activities of the Initiative. "If anyone can figure out how to kill them, its the Scourge," Angel had explained coldly. "And if Scourge members are killed in the process, that's a good thing. I've been picking them off as best I can, but this way is a little faster."

The groups met in Restfield cemetery. The Scourge suffered terrible losses fighting. Finally, his back against the wall of a crypt, one of the Scourge leaders muttered a spell. A portal opened behind him. As the Scooby Gang watched from the distance, the Scourge took the Initiative members one by one and threw them into the portal. When the last former human had been thrown through, the Scourge sealed the portal, with a spell that Willow said should hold, though she planned to do her own version once the whole thing was over.

"Now!" exclaimed Buffy, and the group attacked what was left of the Scourge. Killing them was laughably
easy, for they were tired and not expecting another attack.

*****

After the battle, Willow and Buffy sat in their dorm room. Angel and Cordelia had returned to LA, without speaking to Buffy. Buffy was deeply depressed. She knew that Angel had known that Riley was her boyfriend, and she was ashamed that he knew how stupid she'd been.

"I'm sorry about Riley," said Willow. "I know you wanted it to work."

"I thought he was normal, except for his job. Most guys couldn't accept the idea that there are vampires, let alone the fact that I am a Slayer," said Buffy. "I didn't want to date someone like Owen, who thought danger was a thrill. Riley was like that, but different. He seemed more sensible. It turns out that I didn't ask enough questions when I found out he was involved in the Initiative. I should have learned more about their goals before hopping into bed with him, and telling him who I really was. I'm sitting here thinking that I'm never going to find somebody who can accept the supernatural, they'll either get themselves killed or be more deeply involved than I am. Its hopeless." As she wept, Willow felt her own heart
break in sympathy.

"There's always hope," she told Buffy. "There's something I want to tell you, but you have to keep it a secret from Angel."

Buffy stared at her, her eyes swimming with tears as she nodded. Willow took a deep breath and continued. "Remember the mohra demon that attacked you two at Thanksgiving? The first time it attacked, it got away. Angel eventually killed it, but their blood mixed and he was human. You guys were together for a whole day and night, before Angel realized that without his strength, he was a liability to you. There was a temporal fold, so you wouldn't remember, and so that Angel could kill the mohra demon the permanent way before he could be changed."

"Why are you telling me this? Angel and I could have been together, and he threw it away? I don't feel better now, I feel worse," sobbed Buffy.

"No, listen. When Angel turned human, Doyle said that he thought only the powers that be could do that, that only they could have that kind of power. He implied that if Angel does enough good, the powers that be will reward him with his humanity, and the strength to be a real, equal partner to you."

Buffy dried her eyes, but her face was still sad. "How am I supposed to go on with my life, knowing what Angel and I could have had?"

"I think maybe you guys need this time apart," Willow ventured slowly. "You need to have life experience without Angel to protect you from ever falling and getting hurt. You can't go through life without getting hurt, that's how you learn things. Maybe Angel needs to be away from you so that he can relearn his humanity. When you two were together, you were the whole world to him. He could hide from reality and the world by being totally devoted to you. Maybe he needs to learn how to interact without you."

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," mused Buffy.

"Don't tell him that you know. The only person he told was Doyle, and he told Cordelia. Cordelia told us last night. If Angel knew that you knew, I think it would only make him feel worse. He wants you to be happy," said Willow. "We all do."

Buffy rose from her bed, drew some weapons from beneath her bed.

"Where are you going?" Willow asked, worried.

"Patrol," sighed Buffy. "Thanks, Willow, for telling me. It gives me something to hope for," she said softly. "I just wish I could remember."

As Buffy left, Willow began going through her spell books, hoping to find some spell that could give Buffy her memory of the lost day back. As Amy squealed in her cage, Willow shook her finger at her reprovingly.  "Amy, I'll get to you as soon as I can."


The End

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
dierileydie

Send feedback
Back