Part 9: After the Big Silence
by Philip S.
Summary: Buffy Summers and her friends have survived high school and are off to college. Apart from dorm problems and snotty professors, though, there are troubles of the more lethal kind. Rating: PG-13 Disclaimer: Buffy and associated characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Original characters appearing in this story are copyright Yours Truly. Archive: Story will be archived at www.shadow-dancing.com. Everyone else who wants to archive this, just ask. Title Picture: www.shadow-dancing.com/Pics/Buffy_College_One.jpg
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And here she had thought her life was spiraling out of control before, Buffy mused.
Everything had changed so fast, so very fast. She had gone to Los Angeles to chew Angel out for visiting Sunnydale without telling her. He had come riding in like the dark knight in not-so-shining armor to save the not-so- helpless damsel in distress and then vanished again, trying to cover up his tracks by making her best friends lie to her.
Good thing they had never been able to do that. If they had she would never have gone to Los Angeles. Never been there to see Angel change the way he did. Human, she thought with a broad smile blooming on her face. He was human now. They were back together, or rather together for the first time, really together. Memories of the two nights they had spent together still made her tingly all over.
He was still in Los Angeles, of course. There were a lot of loose ends he had to tie up before he could come home to her. Home. She liked the sound of that. Maybe they should be looking for a place to move in together. Buffy was, at all times, aware that being the Slayer entailed a shorter life than most people and she wanted to spend every free second of it with him.
Something had been on his mind, though, had been even that final evening before she had to get back and they had made love for the last time. Was he still worried because of his poor performance against the Mhora? Buffy had to admit that it would be difficult to get used to Angel no longer fighting by her side. He had been her only true equal, the only one she could really trust to fight by her side and handle it. It had not been that way with Faith, the younger Slayer always too busy doing her own thing, fighting her own demons. With him, though, it had been perfect.
If that was the only thing she lost in exchange for all the other things they now could do, though, she would accept it with a big smile on her face. It was worth it a hundred times over.
She had barely gotten back to Sunnydale when more weirdness started. Her friends did not know yet about Angel, his turning human, or his coming back to Sunnydale. She did not know how to tell them. Maybe it would be best just to present them with fait accompli. Xander would probably throw a fit, but his opinion did not hold much weight with her, at least not where Angel was concerned. Willow would probably be supportive once she got over her hate-Angel-because-I'm-your-best-friend-and-he-hurt-you phase.
Her true worry was Giles. Her Watcher had lost a lot to Angelus and, though he had tried, she knew he had never quite been able to forgive Angel. When Buffy had given Angel her blood in order to save his life he had been extremely upset with her, though he had never said anything about that, either. He did not have to. She had seen it in his eyes.
Then there was her mother. She, too, had never been happy with her relationship to Angel. Buffy loved her mom, but that did not mean she was blind to some of her shortcomings, either. The main reason why Joyce had managed to remain oblivious about Buffy's life as the Slayer for so long had been her own desire to give her daughter the perfect life, the one she herself had never got. The perfect life with the perfect loving man. A man who was not a vampire.
Well, Angel was not a vampire anymore, was he? Maybe that would be enough to win her mother over to her side.
"Well ...," the man sitting on the bed opposite her said, pulling her back to the present. Right, there was that other problem she had almost managed to put out of her mind.
Riley sat on Willow's bed, the dorm room around them almost as quiet as the entire town had been these last few days. It was over now. The Gentlemen, the demons who had stolen everyone's voices, had been defeated. In the process, though, she had learned some things about Riley. He had learned some things about her, too.
"Wanna start?" she finally asked him. He had been the one to come around to talk, after all. Only they had spent the last ten minutes or so doing anything but that. For a moment she had wondered whether the Gentlemen had returned and taken both their voices again. In some ways that would have made things a lot easier.
"I'm not sure where to start," he admitted. "I ... I haven't really managed to wrap my mind around everything that happened last night."
Yeah, Buffy agreed, last night had definitely been one of the stranger nights, even in a life like hers. She had finally managed to find the Gentlemen's lair, had followed them and started beating the crap out of their hunchbacked minions, when someone else had arrived. Someone dressed in black combat gear, his face hidden behind a black ski mask and night vision goggles.
She had seen men dressed like that before, of course. During Halloween they had come across a whole group of them, but had figured they were just dressed for the night. A few weeks later, though, she had run into one of them in the forest when she had been hot on the trail of Oz. He had delayed her, delayed her to the point where she had almost been too late to save Willow's life from a transformed Oz.
Plus there were the things Giles had heard from his various sources, things about some sort of amateur demon hunters having taken up residence in Sunnydale. Willy's bar had been rife with rumors about them as well. To top it all of there had been that little fight with Spike in this very dorm room just a few weeks ago, the one where the vampire had quite thoroughly kicked black-clad ass.
Seeing as they had been in the middle of a fight they had joined forces by unspoken agreement, taking out the demons and finally managing to destroy the Gentlemen as well. During the fight, though, one of the creatures had managed to smash her mysterious partner's goggles and rip off his mask, revealing a rather well-known face to her.
Riley had recognized her as well, of course. Had seen her perform fighting moves that were above and beyond anything a normal human could do. Now he wanted answers. Well, so did she.
"What are you?" Riley asked out of the blue.
"Buffy Summers," she deadpanned. "Freshman. You?"
"This isn't funny."
"No, it isn't. What were you doing there last night, Riley? You could have gotten yourself really, really dead."
She was surprised at how deeply that fear disturbed her. Riley was someone she considered a friend, though that might change now that she knew ... well, she did not know all that much, really, except that he was not what he had seemed. Still, the thought of him getting killed was not a good thing.
"I would say the same about you, but somehow I got the impression that you were rather capable of handling everything these ... things threw at you. I mean ... I've seen a lot of good fighters, but you ..."
"You didn't do too bad yourself," she said. Which was true, he had handled himself well ... for a normal human, at least. She could not help but think back to Angel again. Angel, who was also human now. Angel, who had also nearly gotten himself killed fighting demons.
"Thanks," Riley did off her comment. "But I don't think I managed to throw these things for a loop with a single punch. There is also the fact that I'm covered with bruises today and can barely walk. You seem right as rain."
"Looks can be deceiving."
"I bet."
There was silence between them once more.
"Let me take a wild guess here," Buffy finally restarted the conversation, realizing they had to go somewhere before they both died of old age. "You are not really a psych TA. From what I've seen you are a trained fighter and you carry a lot of equipment I've only seen in James Bond movies so far, so I'd say you are part of some sort of demon hunting group that has set up shop here in Sunnydale. That about right?"
"I ... I'm not really allowed to talk about it," Riley looked away, uncomfortable.
"The way I see it," she continued, "you are either part of some underground organization that has taken it upon themselves to rid the world of evil," she was thinking of a certain England-based bunch of snotty bastards, "or you work for some sort of government agency that has finally noticed that Sunnydale is the murder capital of America and decided to do something about it. Door number one or two, Riley?"
The young man sighed deeply. "I would be a lot more comfortable with this if I knew at least a little bit about you in return, Buffy. Until yesterday I thought you were a normal college girl and now ..."
"I am a normal college girl," she interrupted him. "I just ... I have some unusual hobbies."
"Like demon hunting?"
Buffy tried to figure out how to go about this. Riley had not confirmed any of the theories that she and Giles had come up with regarding the black- clad commando guys, but neither had he denied them. From the look on his face he was reluctant to reveal anything and extremely uncomfortable with her knowing even as little as she did.
"I'm not a vampire or something," she told him, "if that was what you were thinking."
"I figured that much, seeing as I've seen you in the sunlight a couple of times. But you can't tell me that there isn't something ... unusual about you. No human being could have done the things you did last night."
"I am human," she emphasized. God knew she had been internally debating that point often enough. "I'm just a little ... well, I've got a little something extra, you might say."
"And that would be?"
She did not know whether she could trust him. A day ago she would have said yes, would have said he was a nice guy with nothing to hide and a nice smile. Someone she might have fallen for if her heart had not been given away long ago. Now, though, she knew that he had been hiding things, living behind a mask. Who knew how much of that mask she might be looking at even now. Was Riley even his real name?
Still, she could not exactly throw stones about the hiding and he had been fighting those demons, not been in league with them. If the rumors they had heard were true then these demon hunters were doing their part, however small, to make Sunnydale safer.
Giles would probably chew her out for this, but Buffy decided to trust her instincts.
"I'm the Slayer," she told Riley.
Riley did not manage to keep the look of surprise from his face completely. The Slayer? The vampire Spike had muttered endlessly about someone or something called the Slayer while he had been their prisoner. He had come up with an impressive amount of things he would do to this Slayer the moment he got free. None of them had had any idea what a Slayer was, but considering that the vampire had obviously not been very fond of it Riley was tempted to place it on the side of the good guys until evidence to the contrary presented itself.
Only now 'it' turned out to be Buffy?
"I ... I heard some rumors about someone called the Slayer," he said carefully, hoping to disguise how little he really knew. "Some vampires were talking about ..."
"Let me guess," Buffy interrupted him again. "Not my biggest fans."
"Not really, no."
"Let me give you the short version, Riley. I'm the Slayer. I kill vampires and demons for a living. I'm stronger and faster than your average human so I can do it well. Sunnydale is keeping me mighty busy, so I'm not ungrateful for any kind of help. Still, I would really like to know what kind of help it is I'm getting from you and yours."
Riley just stared at her, obviously struggling to make sense of everything she was telling him. A part of her was busy berating her for just spilling her secrets like this, but her instincts were telling her that Riley was a good guy and she trusted them. For now, at least.
"I ... I really can't tell you anything, Buffy. I'm not allowed to ..."
"Okay, fine. Let me tell you something, though, Riley!" She stood, walking closer to him. "I saw your guys fighting against Spike, right here in this room. Were you there?"
He nodded and a pang went through her heart. She had seen what Spike had done to the commandos that night. If she had arrived any later it would not have gone down without casualties.
"He almost killed you. All of you. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you came because otherwise Willow would probably have ended up dead, but ... correct me if I'm mistaken, but you haven't been all that effective in your demon hunting mission so far, have you?"
Slowly he nodded again.
"I thought so. Riley, this is not a game, okay? Most of the things out there are a lot stronger than humans and perfectly willing to make a meal out of you. As I said, I'm glad for every bit of help I get, but if the only thing the help manages is to get itself killed then it isn't really worth the effort is it?"
Riley did not know what to say, just stared at her. Buffy could not help but think of another man, now human as well, who had almost gotten himself killed fighting demons with nothing but human strength and determination on his side. A man who, she was almost certain, would do it again because that was simply the way he was.
The very thought of losing him ...
"I don't want to see you dead, Riley," she told him, though her words, she realized, were really meant for someone else. "Maybe ... maybe you should think about giving up this job."
TO BE CONTINUED
Summary: Buffy Summers and her friends have survived high school and are off to college. Apart from dorm problems and snotty professors, though, there are troubles of the more lethal kind. Rating: PG-13 Disclaimer: Buffy and associated characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Original characters appearing in this story are copyright Yours Truly. Archive: Story will be archived at www.shadow-dancing.com. Everyone else who wants to archive this, just ask. Title Picture: www.shadow-dancing.com/Pics/Buffy_College_One.jpg
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And here she had thought her life was spiraling out of control before, Buffy mused.
Everything had changed so fast, so very fast. She had gone to Los Angeles to chew Angel out for visiting Sunnydale without telling her. He had come riding in like the dark knight in not-so-shining armor to save the not-so- helpless damsel in distress and then vanished again, trying to cover up his tracks by making her best friends lie to her.
Good thing they had never been able to do that. If they had she would never have gone to Los Angeles. Never been there to see Angel change the way he did. Human, she thought with a broad smile blooming on her face. He was human now. They were back together, or rather together for the first time, really together. Memories of the two nights they had spent together still made her tingly all over.
He was still in Los Angeles, of course. There were a lot of loose ends he had to tie up before he could come home to her. Home. She liked the sound of that. Maybe they should be looking for a place to move in together. Buffy was, at all times, aware that being the Slayer entailed a shorter life than most people and she wanted to spend every free second of it with him.
Something had been on his mind, though, had been even that final evening before she had to get back and they had made love for the last time. Was he still worried because of his poor performance against the Mhora? Buffy had to admit that it would be difficult to get used to Angel no longer fighting by her side. He had been her only true equal, the only one she could really trust to fight by her side and handle it. It had not been that way with Faith, the younger Slayer always too busy doing her own thing, fighting her own demons. With him, though, it had been perfect.
If that was the only thing she lost in exchange for all the other things they now could do, though, she would accept it with a big smile on her face. It was worth it a hundred times over.
She had barely gotten back to Sunnydale when more weirdness started. Her friends did not know yet about Angel, his turning human, or his coming back to Sunnydale. She did not know how to tell them. Maybe it would be best just to present them with fait accompli. Xander would probably throw a fit, but his opinion did not hold much weight with her, at least not where Angel was concerned. Willow would probably be supportive once she got over her hate-Angel-because-I'm-your-best-friend-and-he-hurt-you phase.
Her true worry was Giles. Her Watcher had lost a lot to Angelus and, though he had tried, she knew he had never quite been able to forgive Angel. When Buffy had given Angel her blood in order to save his life he had been extremely upset with her, though he had never said anything about that, either. He did not have to. She had seen it in his eyes.
Then there was her mother. She, too, had never been happy with her relationship to Angel. Buffy loved her mom, but that did not mean she was blind to some of her shortcomings, either. The main reason why Joyce had managed to remain oblivious about Buffy's life as the Slayer for so long had been her own desire to give her daughter the perfect life, the one she herself had never got. The perfect life with the perfect loving man. A man who was not a vampire.
Well, Angel was not a vampire anymore, was he? Maybe that would be enough to win her mother over to her side.
"Well ...," the man sitting on the bed opposite her said, pulling her back to the present. Right, there was that other problem she had almost managed to put out of her mind.
Riley sat on Willow's bed, the dorm room around them almost as quiet as the entire town had been these last few days. It was over now. The Gentlemen, the demons who had stolen everyone's voices, had been defeated. In the process, though, she had learned some things about Riley. He had learned some things about her, too.
"Wanna start?" she finally asked him. He had been the one to come around to talk, after all. Only they had spent the last ten minutes or so doing anything but that. For a moment she had wondered whether the Gentlemen had returned and taken both their voices again. In some ways that would have made things a lot easier.
"I'm not sure where to start," he admitted. "I ... I haven't really managed to wrap my mind around everything that happened last night."
Yeah, Buffy agreed, last night had definitely been one of the stranger nights, even in a life like hers. She had finally managed to find the Gentlemen's lair, had followed them and started beating the crap out of their hunchbacked minions, when someone else had arrived. Someone dressed in black combat gear, his face hidden behind a black ski mask and night vision goggles.
She had seen men dressed like that before, of course. During Halloween they had come across a whole group of them, but had figured they were just dressed for the night. A few weeks later, though, she had run into one of them in the forest when she had been hot on the trail of Oz. He had delayed her, delayed her to the point where she had almost been too late to save Willow's life from a transformed Oz.
Plus there were the things Giles had heard from his various sources, things about some sort of amateur demon hunters having taken up residence in Sunnydale. Willy's bar had been rife with rumors about them as well. To top it all of there had been that little fight with Spike in this very dorm room just a few weeks ago, the one where the vampire had quite thoroughly kicked black-clad ass.
Seeing as they had been in the middle of a fight they had joined forces by unspoken agreement, taking out the demons and finally managing to destroy the Gentlemen as well. During the fight, though, one of the creatures had managed to smash her mysterious partner's goggles and rip off his mask, revealing a rather well-known face to her.
Riley had recognized her as well, of course. Had seen her perform fighting moves that were above and beyond anything a normal human could do. Now he wanted answers. Well, so did she.
"What are you?" Riley asked out of the blue.
"Buffy Summers," she deadpanned. "Freshman. You?"
"This isn't funny."
"No, it isn't. What were you doing there last night, Riley? You could have gotten yourself really, really dead."
She was surprised at how deeply that fear disturbed her. Riley was someone she considered a friend, though that might change now that she knew ... well, she did not know all that much, really, except that he was not what he had seemed. Still, the thought of him getting killed was not a good thing.
"I would say the same about you, but somehow I got the impression that you were rather capable of handling everything these ... things threw at you. I mean ... I've seen a lot of good fighters, but you ..."
"You didn't do too bad yourself," she said. Which was true, he had handled himself well ... for a normal human, at least. She could not help but think back to Angel again. Angel, who was also human now. Angel, who had also nearly gotten himself killed fighting demons.
"Thanks," Riley did off her comment. "But I don't think I managed to throw these things for a loop with a single punch. There is also the fact that I'm covered with bruises today and can barely walk. You seem right as rain."
"Looks can be deceiving."
"I bet."
There was silence between them once more.
"Let me take a wild guess here," Buffy finally restarted the conversation, realizing they had to go somewhere before they both died of old age. "You are not really a psych TA. From what I've seen you are a trained fighter and you carry a lot of equipment I've only seen in James Bond movies so far, so I'd say you are part of some sort of demon hunting group that has set up shop here in Sunnydale. That about right?"
"I ... I'm not really allowed to talk about it," Riley looked away, uncomfortable.
"The way I see it," she continued, "you are either part of some underground organization that has taken it upon themselves to rid the world of evil," she was thinking of a certain England-based bunch of snotty bastards, "or you work for some sort of government agency that has finally noticed that Sunnydale is the murder capital of America and decided to do something about it. Door number one or two, Riley?"
The young man sighed deeply. "I would be a lot more comfortable with this if I knew at least a little bit about you in return, Buffy. Until yesterday I thought you were a normal college girl and now ..."
"I am a normal college girl," she interrupted him. "I just ... I have some unusual hobbies."
"Like demon hunting?"
Buffy tried to figure out how to go about this. Riley had not confirmed any of the theories that she and Giles had come up with regarding the black- clad commando guys, but neither had he denied them. From the look on his face he was reluctant to reveal anything and extremely uncomfortable with her knowing even as little as she did.
"I'm not a vampire or something," she told him, "if that was what you were thinking."
"I figured that much, seeing as I've seen you in the sunlight a couple of times. But you can't tell me that there isn't something ... unusual about you. No human being could have done the things you did last night."
"I am human," she emphasized. God knew she had been internally debating that point often enough. "I'm just a little ... well, I've got a little something extra, you might say."
"And that would be?"
She did not know whether she could trust him. A day ago she would have said yes, would have said he was a nice guy with nothing to hide and a nice smile. Someone she might have fallen for if her heart had not been given away long ago. Now, though, she knew that he had been hiding things, living behind a mask. Who knew how much of that mask she might be looking at even now. Was Riley even his real name?
Still, she could not exactly throw stones about the hiding and he had been fighting those demons, not been in league with them. If the rumors they had heard were true then these demon hunters were doing their part, however small, to make Sunnydale safer.
Giles would probably chew her out for this, but Buffy decided to trust her instincts.
"I'm the Slayer," she told Riley.
Riley did not manage to keep the look of surprise from his face completely. The Slayer? The vampire Spike had muttered endlessly about someone or something called the Slayer while he had been their prisoner. He had come up with an impressive amount of things he would do to this Slayer the moment he got free. None of them had had any idea what a Slayer was, but considering that the vampire had obviously not been very fond of it Riley was tempted to place it on the side of the good guys until evidence to the contrary presented itself.
Only now 'it' turned out to be Buffy?
"I ... I heard some rumors about someone called the Slayer," he said carefully, hoping to disguise how little he really knew. "Some vampires were talking about ..."
"Let me guess," Buffy interrupted him again. "Not my biggest fans."
"Not really, no."
"Let me give you the short version, Riley. I'm the Slayer. I kill vampires and demons for a living. I'm stronger and faster than your average human so I can do it well. Sunnydale is keeping me mighty busy, so I'm not ungrateful for any kind of help. Still, I would really like to know what kind of help it is I'm getting from you and yours."
Riley just stared at her, obviously struggling to make sense of everything she was telling him. A part of her was busy berating her for just spilling her secrets like this, but her instincts were telling her that Riley was a good guy and she trusted them. For now, at least.
"I ... I really can't tell you anything, Buffy. I'm not allowed to ..."
"Okay, fine. Let me tell you something, though, Riley!" She stood, walking closer to him. "I saw your guys fighting against Spike, right here in this room. Were you there?"
He nodded and a pang went through her heart. She had seen what Spike had done to the commandos that night. If she had arrived any later it would not have gone down without casualties.
"He almost killed you. All of you. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you came because otherwise Willow would probably have ended up dead, but ... correct me if I'm mistaken, but you haven't been all that effective in your demon hunting mission so far, have you?"
Slowly he nodded again.
"I thought so. Riley, this is not a game, okay? Most of the things out there are a lot stronger than humans and perfectly willing to make a meal out of you. As I said, I'm glad for every bit of help I get, but if the only thing the help manages is to get itself killed then it isn't really worth the effort is it?"
Riley did not know what to say, just stared at her. Buffy could not help but think of another man, now human as well, who had almost gotten himself killed fighting demons with nothing but human strength and determination on his side. A man who, she was almost certain, would do it again because that was simply the way he was.
The very thought of losing him ...
"I don't want to see you dead, Riley," she told him, though her words, she realized, were really meant for someone else. "Maybe ... maybe you should think about giving up this job."
TO BE CONTINUED