Title: The Assistant, part 41
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: R
Summary: More about the Initiative
Spoilers: season 4
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.
Maggie Walsh spent several days locked away in room 314. Riley had gotten back from his furlough to find her incarcerated in the room with strict orders not to be disturbed. He worried about her and told Forest and Graham that if she didn’t come out soon, he would go in, regardless of her orders.
When she finally did emerge, Riley was shocked at her appearance. She hadn’t eaten, bathed or slept in three days and it showed. Her eyes were sunken pools of bruised madness.
“Dr. Walsh? Are you OK?” Riley asked her tentatively.
She turned her eyes to him and he backed up a step before he could stop himself. “They won’t take my project, Riley. I won’t let her win.”
“Uh, who, ma’am?”
“Buffy. I won’t let Buffy win. She has done this. I’m not going to let her get away with it. She must be stopped.”
“Dr. Walsh, Buffy’s only a girl. How could she be responsible for shutting down the Initiative? It was just bad luck, that’s all.”
“Get your team together, Riley. I want you to watch her twenty-four hours a day. She mustn’t interfere till I’m ready for her.”
“Dr. Walsh,” he said gently, “there isn’t a team anymore, remember? It’s just me, Forest, and Graham. I wanted to tell you…we had new orders waiting when we got back. They’re pulling us out of here. This base of operations will be closed within two weeks. I’ll help you pack up your stuff.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Riley. This is my project and nobody, not the military, not the government, not even the goddamned Slayer is making me leave till I’m ready.”
Riley didn’t know what to do. He was caught in a dilemma. He didn’t want to disobey Professor Walsh; she was his mentor and he liked and respected her, but she was clearly having some sort of breakdown and he didn’t know what to do. If he went to his military superiors they would put her under guard and she might never work on another important project again, but if he did nothing, she would lose everything anyway because his commanding officers would never let her remain here alone. If only he had someone to whom he could talk! The only important person he actually knew in Sunnydale was Mr. Giles. Biting his lip, he debated about what to do.
Buffy and Giles had just finished dinner and were cleaning up the kitchen when there was a knock at their front door.
“I wonder who that is? The guys were all gonna be busy tonight.”
“Let me get my sword. You answer the door and I’ll stand to one side, just in case,” Giles told her.
“OK.”
She opened the door and was flabbergasted to see the Initiative’s golden boy, Riley Finn standing on her porch. “Riley! What brings you by?”
He didn’t ask if he could come in and didn’t wait for an invitation, he simply stepped across the threshold. Giles looked a bit sheepish as he lowered his sword and tucked it into its scabbard.
“I need to talk to you, Mr. Giles. It’s, well, it’s important.”
Giles raised his eyebrow inquisitively, but Riley looked at Buffy and then away. She got the message: Guy Talk.
“I have to patrol anyhow.” She kissed Giles goodbye, waved at Riley and stepped outside. Before she had gone far, the darkness enclosed her and the two men lost sight of her slender form.
Riley turned to Giles. “Can I please talk to you?”
“Of course. Would you like some tea?”
Riley barely hid his grimace. “No, thank you, sir.” The young soldier paced around the room practically wringing his hands. “I, that is, well, you’re like the only responsible, grown-up person I know and I think, I mean, Dr. Walsh… We’re in real trouble there, Mr. Giles. I got back from furlough and she was acting real strange. She locked herself in one of the underground labs and didn’t come out for days—not even to eat or sleep. She looks…bad. Her eyes are sort of wild and she’s gotten really paranoid about Buffy. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m assuming you do not wish her, er, aberrations to become, ah, known to your superior officers?”
Riley looked grateful. “That’s it exactly, but, sir, we have orders to pack up and get out within two weeks. I want to help her, but she won’t leave. I think that she wants to do something bad to Buffy.”
“That was certainly the impression she left us with when she visited us earlier this week. She threatened to put Buffy in one of her cages and study her.”
Riley rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m sorry, sir. This is clearly worse than I ever thought. I just don’t know what to do. She’s not a bad person, she’s just, um, dedicated to her work.”
Giles chose to reserve his judgment on that score, but nodded sympathetically to the young man. “What do you want me to do?”
“Could you talk to her? Maybe convince her that this isn’t the end of her usefulness or something?”
“Why me? Surely your Dr. Angleman would be of more assistance. Besides, she undoubtedly links me with Buffy. I can’t imagine that she would take my interference all that well.”
“Um, don’t get me wrong, Mr. Giles. Dr. Angleman is a great guy and a brilliant scientist, but he is definitely second string when it comes to Dr. Walsh. She doesn’t respect his opinions enough to listen to him about this.”
“She certainly doesn’t respect me enough to listen to me, then!” Giles said emphatically. “Frankly, Riley, I would much prefer to be left out of your problems. My advice to you is, call in your troops, clean that place out and seal it up permanently. I’m quite glad the Initiative is history.”
“We were doing a lot of good, Mr. Giles! We got those demons off the streets at least.”
“You were experimenting on sentient beings, Riley. They may not be human, but they are people and you and your compatriots were cutting them up like they were lab animals.”
Riley sounded defensive when he spoke again. “They aren’t people!”
“They have complex languages, literature, culture, religion. They marry and raise families. In my experience, that makes them people.”
The soldier had known all of those facts but had never put it together before. “Oh god! You’re right. We were experimenting on people.” He dropped his head into his hands and stumbled from the room without another word.
Buffy returned home less than an hour later. “What did he want, Giles?”
He snorted. “He thought I should talk to Dr. Walsh and convince her to not be insane anymore.”
Buffy’s eyes widened with disbelief. “Wow! What did you say?”
“I told him to close that place down and seal it up. I doubt that he will listen to me, however. I also impressed upon him the fact that demons are people—not nice people, but beings that think and live and speak like we do. It was a bit of a revelation for him, I’m afraid.”
She looked mildly sympathetic. “Yeah, it’s one of the things that make this job so difficult. If demons weren’t evil and out to end humanity, I wouldn’t have to kill them myself.” She shrugged. “Oh, well…”
“Yes, if wishes were horses and all that.”