Author: Lucinda

similar to the series, with chances of violence and moderate sexuality

main characters: Riley, Faith

Faith and Second Chances 15: Bandages and Battle Plans

disclaimer: I do not own any characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

distribution: Wic, Paula, Cat - anyone else ask first.

set in season 4, just after the body-switching has been reversed.

Faith frowned as Riley entered Steve's place. There was this horrible blankness on his face, the look of someone who has just seen something unimaginably horrible and been confronted with the fact that they can't pretend it didn't happen, it won't go away. The look that said monsters were real and they'd just eaten your best friend.

"Riley?" She moved towards him, worried.

He didn't say anything, just clutching a bag in his hand. The other hand was clenched into a fist, and there was a faint trickle of blood coming from inside, welling up between clenched fingers, slow fat drops falling to the floor.

"Riley?" Faith walked towards him, a feeling of cold dread in her stomach as she wondered what was in his hand, what was in the bag. "Riley, talk to me."

He walked into the counter as if he didn't even see it, and his hand flailed to the side. It looked as if he was trying to apply his fist to the face of an attacker, but there was nobody there.

She caught his wrist, noticing that his tendons and muscles were wire taut. "Riley, snap out of it!"

His other hand punched towards her, but she was able to block the blow, following that up with a solid push backwards. His back connected with the wall, the force of impact enough that things perched on the edges of shelves fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

Riley blinked, his eyes slowly focusing on his surroundings. "Faith? I'm... How did I get here?"

"Through the front door, walking like a bad horror movie robot." Faith leaned back, and folded her arms across her chest. "The counter's not going to attack you."

Riley's fist unclenched, and he pushed against the wall with his hand as he stood up, leaving a bloody handprint behind him. "I found... She was... I don't understand how she could do it. I'm not sure how she managed it either. It was horrible."

"I think you're a few pages ahead of me," Faith confessed, moving closer. "Let me take a look at your hand while you start at the beginning? Who did what?"

He held out the small bag, his hand shaking. "It's on these disks. She... We trusted her. We listened, never questioned any of it... Damn."

Faith took the bag and then grabbed his other wrist, looking at his palm. Four gouges marred the underside of his hand, obviously caused by his blunt nails being drug across the palm. The force that it would take... Not impossible, but ordinarily, he'd damn well be aware of what had happened to his hand. She glanced at his face, seeing the pained shock. "It was someone in the Initiative who made that monster?"

"She did. It was her brilliant horrible plan. But he wasn't the first, wasn't supposed to be one of a kind. She started long before him." Riley's hand was starting to curl into a fist again.

"I thought she was just a psychology person?" Faith asked, certain there was stuff that she was missing, and a lot of it.

"Medical first, then psychology." He whispered, and then closed his eyes. "She's been running experiments. Illegal to do drug research on people who don't know. They don't know, and I don't know who they are. She's giving them all sorts of stuff from God only knows where..."

"Riley? Who's she giving drugs to?" Faith was getting a bad feeling about this research.

"I don't know. A bunch of guys, all over eighteen and under thirty. Side effects are under acceptable fucking parameters, whatever that meant to her." His voice was full of pain and betrayal.

Faith blinked, and considered the ages. "Eighteen to thirty... Strong, healthy guys? A collection of easily monitored guys in good shape?"

"That's what the report said. It didn't say where, or how she was explaining the test away, since they don't know." He sighed, and opened his eyes, blinking at his hand. "ow."

"What about a batch of guys right under her thumb? People who aren't going to be talking too much to outsiders because it would blow their cover?" Faith asked the questions, hoping that his mind would be focused enough to follow her logic.

"Where would she get a bunch of people worried about..." Riley swallowed, hard. "You mean us. The soldiers of the Initiative."

"The pieces fit, don't they? You know there's weirdness. She can send you out for the demons, and study their pieces later." Faith tried to keep her voice even, to not yell or curse or hit things. "If someone dies, the rest of you aren't expecting to really know what happens, as long as someone say's they've taken care of it. That whole following orders thing can discourage original thought and questions."

"I wish I could argue with you." Riley's voice was bleak. "But that would explain why that thing looked like Jack. It would explain a lot of things if she was using us for her experiments."

Faith pulled Riley to his feet, softly explaining, "We need to get your hand taken care of. Clean it up, some bandages..."

"You can't make it all better." Riley followed her, shoulders slumping. "My hand, yes, but not... Not the rest."

"Riley, if I could change the past, fix things that got messed up a while ago, don't you think I would have before this? You have no idea how many things I wish I could go back and change." She sighed, and then asked, "So, what's going to happen to her now?"

"She's dead. That patchwork abomination killed her last night." Riley closed his eyes, shaking his head. "She's dead and won't have to suffer as her monster goes out and kills more people. We need to figure out how to stop it. Him. She called it Adam."

"Damn." Faith couldn't find any better words for the whole situation.

"Yeah." Riley admitted. "Damn."

Faith pulled him to the kitchen, grabbing the first aid kit from under the sink. "You said there was info on this demonic frankenstein on those disks? Are we going to be able to find a weakness for it?"

"Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster." Riley commented, his eyes unfocused. "I... If there's a weakness, it might be there. But I don't know if I'll know how to recognize it. We might need to call a few more people into this. Medical students maybe."

"Do you think any of your Initiative guys could help with that? The only person that I could think of is Willow, and I don't know how much help we'd get from one of Buffy's pals." Faith wanted Riley to come back, to think and focus on here and now.

"I don't know. Forrest would have been the person to ask, but..." Riley trailed into silence. "Maybe we should see if Steve can help, he knows a little about a lot of things besides electronics."

"Then let's start looking." Faith decided, hoping that they'd find something.

end F&2nd 15: Bandages and Battle Plans