Misled

Chapter 2 - Maggie Walsh and Wolfram & Hart Collaborate

A/N: The following events happened 2½ years prior to 'Empty Places'.

Part 1

Maggie Walsh was in her office documenting her first meeting with the slayer, Buffy Summers, one of her first year Psychology students. She typed into her computer -

"I found her to be respectful, but not timid, alert and ever on guard, ready for anything; she had an answer for every question asked and a valid defense (or offense) for any criticism whether blatant or perceived.

"The characteristics she displayed in my office are what I would expect of a slayer, however, most have not been exhibited in my classroom, mainly because she is usually half asleep. Now I know why – she's up every night until dawn slaying HSTs.

"While there is much that can be learned from this girl that will be invaluable in our work, she is undisciplined as a soldier and, in my opinion, remains a wild card. That being said, I do, however, recommend that we invite her to join the Initiative. She will be watched at all times and if I perceive that she is becoming a threat in any way, she will be eliminated immediately."

It did not take Maggie long to tire of the slayer. She asked questions incessantly; she countered orders, because according to her, "As a slayer, I will not do that," and worst of all, her influence over the Initiative's prized prototype, Riley Finn, was almost absolute. He would do anything she asked him to do and he was ready to follow her anywhere.

The slayer's presence could no longer be tolerated.

As she pondered the right approach to eliminating the slayer, the phone on her desk rang. She could not have been more surprised when she answered the phone. Representatives from the law offices of Wolfram and Hart in Los Angeles wanted to meet with her. She was so shocked she almost dropped the phone.

Maggie took a deep calming breath before she answered the caller. She would be happy to meet with their representatives. All they told her about the purpose of the meeting was that it would be beneficial to both Wolfram & Hart and the Initiative. At that Maggie's interest was definitely peaked. How did a law firm know about the existence of the Initiative? A meeting was scheduled for the following week and Maggie would have to make the two-hour drive down to LA.

Part 2

The meeting went well. Maggie Walsh had been suspicious at first when she got the request for a meeting from such a prestigious law firm as Wolfram and Hart of Los Angeles.

As the meeting got underway with the company's representatives, Lilah Morgan and Lindsey MacDonald, whom she found to be not only helpful, but charming and personable, she realized that she had a common foe with these people and that made the meeting more than worthwhile. They could help each other in solving some of their problems without much effort from either side and without anyone else knowing what was going on. An agreement between her and the law firm would prove to be mutually beneficial indeed.

She had been more than skeptical at first when she heard what the lawyers had to say about Buffy Summers and her liaison with a local vampire. Miss Summers was a vampire slayer, yes, but for her to actually consort with HSTs was … Maggie couldn't find the words to describe just how wrong that was.

'What was it that Riley had called her, Oh yes, "the truest soul I've ever known". The truest soul indeed, a vampire slayer who, not only doesn't kill vampires, she sleeps with them.' She had been shocked beyond words as she watched a portion of a video of Miss Summers and what appeared to be a sick vampire in which she seemingly forced him to drink from her.

"I must say, Miss Summers is indeed full of surprises," she told her new friends. "I wonder how Riley will react when he sees the real Buffy Summers."

The three of them, Lilah, Lindsey and Maggie, spent hours brainstorming to determine the best approach to eliminate what they perceived to be unacceptable threats to their way of life and to themselves personally. Actually what it boiled down to was the fact that they wanted to eliminate or seriously reduce the influence of Angel, the ensouled vampire, and Buffy Summers, the vampire slayer.

Wolfram and Hart needed to make sure that the slayer stayed away from Angel after seeing the effects that the forgotten day had on him and Maggie wanted to completely remove Buffy Summers' influence on Riley Finn.

They determined that killing the two targets outright would accomplish their desired goal, but it would also bring too much heat down upon themselves, from the Senior Partners in the lawyers' case and from the Watchers' Council and subsequently the US government in Walsh's case. Neither could afford the consequences associated with pissed off higher ups.

That being decided then, their next option was to neutralize their targets without actually killing them or to kill them in a way that did not point back to themselves. Any plans currently in place would remain in place, but going forward they would have to be extremely careful.

Part 3

First they explored options for neutralizing Angel. For example, they could cause him to return to Sunnydale where he would, without a doubt, reunite with the slayer, since that is what he desired above all else. This option was rejected right away; while it would assure that Buffy would no longer be in Riley's life, it would also assure that with the influence of the slayer, Angel would fight on the side of good when the apocalypse came; that was certainly not acceptable to the Senior Partners, that is why they had maneuvered things to influence him to leave Sunnydale in the first place.

"What is his second greatest desire?" Walsh asked.

The answer to that question was simple. Angel wanted to be human, to have his soul bound so that it can never be removed again and he wanted a family. The first two were not options from the lawyers' perspective.

"That being the case then, why not bind his soul with a loophole, he would not be aware of the loophole, of course, and give him the family that he wants; give him something special, something that he always thought he'd never have."

"Like what?" Lindsey wanted to know.

Walsh smiled deviously. "Like a child perhaps."

Lindsey and Lilah looked at each other. One could almost see the wheels turning within their heads. Identical wicked grins touched their faces as they spoke as one. "Darla."

"I'll take care of getting Darla back," Lilah told Lindsey; "you just be prepared to control her once she is lucid again. To accomplish this process it will take quite some time and some very powerful magics. We can't afford to screw this up.

"We still have the slayer's egg that Angel fertilized on the day that we turned back, we'll simply implant that into Darla."

When Walsh asked for an explanation, she was given a glimpse of the power that Wolfram and Hart controlled. If the Senior Partners could wipe out a whole day, what were they really capable of and how had they accomplished capturing Miss Summers' egg without her knowledge?

"The day was actually turned back by the Oracles. We replaced them with our own cyborg agents. These agents still have the memories of the original Oracles, that is how they knew about the forgotten day and how we were informed. As for Miss Summers' egg, we simply picked her up one night while she was on patrol, removed her fertilized egg, erased the procedure from her memory and returned her to Sunnydale, that's all." Lilah spoke as if that should be the most obvious thing in the world.

The committee of three detailed everything to the nth degree and then documented their decisions regarding how they would handle Angel.

They would bring Darla, Angel's sire, back human expecting full well that Darla would finagle her way into Angel's bed, regardless of how he felt about the slayer.

They would implant the slayer's fertilized egg into Darla and she would fulfill one of her childe's greatest desires; she would give him a human child, something no other vampire has ever accomplished.

With his attention focused wholly on his child, the ensouled vampire would not have time to interfere in Wolfram and Hart's affairs.

Now it was time to come up with a plan to handle the slayer. "If what is already in motion does not work out, then you will be responsible for any action taken against the slayer," Lilah told Maggie.

The lawyers didn't tell Walsh that there were already plans in place to kill the slayer.

Buffy's mother was currently seeing a doctor for the headaches she had been having.

With this information the wheels started turning in Lilah's head again. "What is the prognosis?"

"The slayer doesn't know it yet, but her mother has a brain tumor." Walsh told her. "I've seen her scans."

"That's too bad."

From the sound of Lilah's voice, Walsh knew that Lilah was in no way concerned about Joyce Summers' health.

"Why is that? What...?"

"Think about it," Lilah told her. "What would be the slayer's reaction if she lost her mother?"

"She'd be devastated, of course; she … "

Lilah watched Walsh's face as realization dawned on her and when Walsh looked up, Lilah was nodding her head with an evil look in her eyes. "Can you do it without making it obvious?" She asked the professor.

Walsh spoke without hesitation leaving no doubt in the lawyer's mind. "Absolutely."

After exploring ways of accomplishing what needed to be done about Joyce if the current situation continued, they decided upon the best way to proceed.

Lindsey, who had been rather quiet, spoke up and said, "We also have plans for the slayer's younger sister. Taking her mother out of the picture will hurt the slayer, but we need her thoroughly focused on other things, things that do not include Angel.

"There is a hell god in Sunnydale named Glorificus, but the slayer doesn't know it yet and she will not be able to defeat it. We are going to give Dawn a little upgrade to make her capable of handling Glorificus. If we don't, this hell god will bring hell on earth trying to get back to her own dimension. We are not ready for that," he smiled evilly, "not yet anyway."

Part 4

A/N: The following events happened 2 years prior to 'Empty Places'.

During the first few months following Maggie Walsh's return to Sunnydale, her outlook was very positive; even her students noticed the change in her.

Before she could make Riley aware of her new found information about Buffy, Buffy's mother was hospitalized and it turned out, as Maggie already knew, that Joyce had a brain tumor that would require major surgery. Maggie decided that with Buffy being so concerned about her mother, she would have little, if any, time to spend with Riley.

She was mistaken.

Riley was more than attentive to Buffy and he spent every spare moment trying to comfort her and her sister, Dawn. After surgery, Joyce's doctor announced that he had gotten all of the tumor out in time and Joyce was expected to make a full recovery.

With that good news Buffy was finally able to relax and she was able to spend more one-on-one time with Riley.

Seeing this, Maggie was more determined than ever to change the focus of Buffy's attention away from Riley. She had to come up with a way to not only force Buffy to withdraw from UC Sunnydale, but to get rid of Buffy's influence in Riley's life. She didn't really want to proceed with the plans that she and her new friends in LA decided upon, but Buffy was leaving her no choice.

Maggie's first step would be to send Riley away from Sunnydale on a phoney mission, one that would keep him away for several weeks; next was to proceed with the action that was decided upon while she was in LA with Lilah and Lindsey; she had to change the focus of Buffy's attention.

Killing the slayer wasn't the answer since that would only make Riley grieve. No, the answer was to kill Joyce. With her mother out of the way, Buffy would have no other choice but to concentrate her attentions and affections on her younger sister. She would have no time for Riley.

Maggie recalled her LA conversation regarding Buffy's father. He hadn't been in the picture for a long time. Would he come to Sunnydale for his daughters or would he move them to wherever he lived?

From Lilah, Maggie found out that Hank Summers was permanently out of the picture. While his family thought he had moved to Spain with his secretary, this was in fact not the case. In truth he would never be coming back.

"Why is that? Does he know about his ex-wife's illness?" Maggie had asked. What she learned gave Maggie her first glimpse into the evil that was Wolfram and Hart. She shivered as she listened to Lilah describe how they had disposed of Hank Summers.

"He got into privileged information and sought to use it to his advantage. That we could not allow. He should have learned that going against us can be hazardous to your health; in fact, it can be downright fatal."

Lilah Morgan's voice in no way resembled that of the charming and personable young attorney that Maggie had first believed her to be. A combination of Lilah's voice and her words made Maggie shiver and she wondered what she had gotten herself into.

'I know this,' Maggie thought, 'I'd better not ever do anything to cross these people.'

Maggie proceeded with her plans for Riley; she sent him on a special mission which, according to her, required her best soldier for the job. Riley regretted having to leave Buffy at a time when her mother was so ill, but he was proud to have been chosen by Prof Walsh for such an important mission.

Maggie also proceeded with plans to kill Joyce Summers. It was an easy task. She walked into Sunnydale General Hospital one night after visiting hours dressed in a white lab coat and carrying a very large syringe in her pocket. When she left less than five minutes later, she had made sure that Joyce Summers would be dead in a matter of days, plenty of time before Riley was due to return.