Chapter 10: Robin's Thoughts

A/N: Musie decided she wanted to focus on Robin once he was alone with his thoughts.

Challenge: partially to answer a forum request/challenge by DeepBlueJoy for a story with a 'person of color' as a main character – who doesn't die immediately.

Warning: Angry Robin alert!

Thanks to my betas: sorry guys, I finished this one so late that I couldn't send it to you if I wanted to post it before midnight. Hope it doesn't have too many mistakes in it.

Disclaimer: BtVS and AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

Robin's apartment

Once he changed into his comfy sleepwear and grabbed a beer, Robin sprawled out on the easy chair in his living room. It astonished him how big of a place he could get for a fraction of the cost of his place back in New York. Granted, all real estate in the City was insanely expensive compared to most other cities, but against Sunnydale's prices? He'd have to send photos of his place with the rent written in big numbers at the bottom, just to tweak his old buddies a bit.

His humor faded quickly when he allowed himself to think of Spike again. How the hell did the vampire go from killing Slayers to helping them? Obviously at some point Buffy found out that he had killed Slayer before, but decided it didn't matter to her. A dark part of him thought she deserved to be attacked if she was going to let a monster into her life. And Spike wasn't even the first vampire she befriended – or whatever the term she used for them!

While he still thought it was wrong for her Watcher to leave her alone with her sister, now it was becoming more of leaving a young girl with somebody who had given a killer an invitation to her home. The Watcher should have removed Dawn from Buffy's 'care' if those were the kinds of decisions she was making with her life.

Robin ranted to himself for a good hour, getting up to punch the Tae Kwon Do kickstand in the guest bedroom in the hopes of releasing his anger. All it did was cause the rage to continue to build. It got to the point of him almost calling the cops and having them remove Dawn immediately, citing endangerment.

Before he could pick up the phone, however, a tiny voice in his mind asked, 'Isn't this the same woman you vowed to help…no matter what?'

The question stopped him in his tracks.

He remembered the broken way she looked as she turned over once her assailant was gone. The way she collapsed in tears in the kitchen. How concerned her friend, Tara, seemed after talking to her for a few minutes.

Taking a deep breath, Robin realized he almost broke the sacred rule of crisis counseling: you never blame the victim! Even if they could have done things to avoid putting themselves in that situation, it was still the attacker's fault and the attacker's fault alone for their actions. That meant, even if Buffy and Spike were – Robin shuddered to think about it – sexually involved with each other, that didn't give Spike the right to force himself on her.

Now that he had cooled down a bit, Robin remembered another lesson Bernie taught him growing up. It was just after he turned thirteen – which in Bernie's eyes meant he could be treated like a man. His mom's Watcher had learned that the supernatural world wasn't as black and white as the Council claimed it to be. That just because something was called a demon, didn't mean it was automatically evil. The flip side was that just because someone was a human, didn't mean they were automatically good. The crime statistics were proof of that.

Flashback…

Bernie had heard of a place where demons and humans mingled, but somebody was stirring up trouble. Naturally, Robin assumed that it was a demon that they were going to deal with. When they got to the building and started searching it, though, Robin saw a human torturing this creature that looked like a cross between a bat and a Shar Pei dog. Apparently the human hit the nerve ending he was probing for because the demon's face broke out into several tentacles.

The man grabbed one of the tentacles and was about to slice it off when Bernie hit him with the butt of his crossbow.

Untying the demon, Bernie asked, "Jacques…you okay?"

"Yes, thanks to you, Watcher Crowley!" the demon replied gratefully. "I should have listened to Adelaide when she said not to trust the humans in this group anymore. But the man said he had something that would assure my spawn grew up strong and healthy."

Since they couldn't report the human to the police, Bernie settled for taking his picture instead. "I'll get copies of this made, and I'd like you to circulate this at all of the neutral spots. Make sure that the non-violent types know to avoid him," he commanded of Jacques.

On their way home, Bernie glanced down at his son and said, "Remember the adage, 'Never judge a book by its cover', boy? It applies to the hidden world too. Make sure that if you're going to kill something, that it's evil. That's why we have to study the different demon species. Jacques' species might look bad – especially when their face does that thing – but they are generally the nicest, most helpful demons that a human can befriend. I just wouldn't bring them around a cat lover."

End of flashback…

Even though he couldn't imagine how it happened, Robin needed to find out the facts of how Spike became part of the Slayer's team before he passed judgment on her. He ignored the part of his brain that said he was only doing this because he was attracted to Buffy. He had never let his emotions color his choices to a dangerous extent before, and he doubted that he was doing that now. If she was a rogue Slayer, he wouldn't hesitate to call the Council down on her.

A/N: Next will probably be the Buffy/Wes talk in the morning.