Title: The Assistant, part 47
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.
Giles stepped out of the shower and slipped on his robe before entering their bedroom. His beautiful wife lay on their bed, arms tucked under her head as she gazed at the ceiling. She smiled when he approached the bed.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he replied with a smile of his own. “How is Willow?”
“I think she’ll be OK in the long run but Oz leaving her was harsh.”
He nodded but said nothing. Buffy continued.
“I think it’s for the best. This way, I won’t have to kill him someday. Am I a bad person for thinking that?”
“Not at all, love. The thought had crossed my mind more than once that Oz was a danger to all of us.”
“Has there ever been a Slayer who contracted lycanthropy?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing, but, in this, who wants to be first?”
“Exactly.”
He hung his robe up and Buffy saw he had been naked beneath it. When he started to reach for his pajamas, she sat up. “Why don’t you leave those off for right now?”
He turned towards her. “Did you have something in mind?”
“Yeah. I was thinking I’d like to touch you. You feel so good to me, Rupert.”
He stalked toward her looking very much like a predator. He put both his hands down on the bed so that she was caged by his arms and one knee that crept up to rest on the mattress. “By all means, beloved. Touch me. I live for you to touch me.”
He loved her for hours that night. He worshiped her body with his own. It wasn’t just sex; it was the absolute best kind of lovemaking—a commitment shared between two people who love each other. She looked at him with her eyes wide and happy, unshadowed by the nearly continuous fears and doubts that plagued her about her role and destiny as the Slayer. For tonight, she was simply a young woman making love with her husband. It was enough.
“I love you, Rupert.”
“I love you too, my dearest.”
She rolled over on her side and propped her head on her arm as she gazed at him. “I’m glad you’re my husband. I mean, you and not Merrick.”
He felt tears on his cheeks as her words delved deep into his heart, soothing insecurities he hadn’t known existed. Though his vision was blurred he felt her lean forward and kiss the teardrops from his face.
“He was your first Watcher. The bond nearly formed with him. Had you been just a few months older…”
“Well, it didn’t happen. Not that I don’t love him to pieces, because I do. But you are the other half of my heart.”
“As you are mine. I never expected when I came to be your Watcher that the bond would form. I knew that it had done so with others but, somehow, I thought I would be immune. I’m so very grateful that I wasn’t.”
“It’s been hard on you, though.”
“Yes, sometimes, but it’s also been glorious. I wouldn’t give that up, just for a bit more peace in my life.” He leaned over and kissed her again, snuggling her in his strong arms. “We should get a bit of sleep. God knows, the others will be demanding our attentions soon.”
“Weird to think my old stalker Riley is now sleeping in one of our guest rooms.”
He chuckled. “He’s still a fool, however.”
“Um.” She snuggled against him, sleepy and comfortable from their lovemaking. Her eyes drifted closed and he chuckled again silently as she emitted the tiniest of snores against his chest.
He closed his eyes, comforted not only by her very real presence in his arms but by her scent and the gentle rhythm of her breathing. In seconds, he had joined her in slumber.
They were awoken less than six hours later by somebody thundering up the steps and beating on their bedroom door. Buffy, always a deep sleeper, merely rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head, content to drift back into unconsciousness to the rhythm of the blows.
Giles, on the other hand, was one of those people who wake up completely and thoroughly. He rolled over, looked at his wife and grinned. She could sleep through a herd of stampeding buffalo. He sat up, found his robe and drew it on before making his way to the door.
“What the bloody hell do you want?” He greeted Xander grumpily.
“Get Buffy! Vampires have taken control of a church downtown—holding the congregation captive. I looked in the window, Adam’s there.”
Suddenly galvanized, Giles nodded, closed the door and ran to the bed to wake the Slayer. He pulled the blankets off her and tossed them to the floor.
“What?” she mumbled.
“Vampires in broad daylight in a church downtown. Adam’s there. Get dressed. Hurry.”
She threw on her clothes so rapidly that he was still buttoning his shirt when she finished.
“Plan?”
“Kill them all,” she told him.
He nodded. “That seems sound. How?”
“Lots of stakes, holy water, crossbow; you bring your sword.”
“If Adam’s there he’s going to make an attempt to kill you, maybe try to kill everyone.”
She looked thoughtful. “Squirt guns full of Holy water. Get those super soakers Xander was playing with the other day.”
Giles nodded. The guns could fire a blast of water forty feet. Filled with Holy water they would be formidable weapons. He rushed downstairs to begin filling them. As soon as Xander saw what he was doing he grabbed up one of the guns and helped. Buffy came downstairs carrying two crossbows and enough bolts to take down forty vamps. She took one of the filled guns and slung it over her shoulders by the strap.
“You guys ready?”
“Ready,” they acknowledged.
Willow ran up the sidewalk as they were starting the car. Without a word, she leaped into the vehicle, slamming the door as it started off. “I was hoping you wouldn’t have left yet. I was at the drug store and I heard the news over the radio.” She panted for a moment before continuing. “Knew I had to get back.”
Buffy passed her a crossbow. “Aim for the heart and don’t forget, we’ve got civilians present. Everybody got their crosses?”
At their nods, she fingered hers for a moment. “Let’s hope we get that bastard today.”
They pulled up outside the church, or rather, outside the police line blocking the entrance.
“How are we getting past that?” Buffy asked her husband.
“We need a diversion.”
Just then, Riley and Graham ran up to the car. “We heard…we heard on the radio a group of crazies had taken over the church.”
“Vampires,” Xander told the panting men.
“What! It’s broad daylight. How can they be out, let alone in a church?” Graham asked.
“Never mind how, we need to get in there,” Buffy told them. “Start a fight. Get as many of these bystanders involved as you can. I want a full-fledged riot in the next five minutes.”
Riley nodded, went up to a biker-type and started screaming at him. Within seconds they were rolling around on the ground exchanging punches. Some of the biker’s friends got involved and Graham and Xander jumped in to help. The cops moved to stop the brawl before it turned into a free-for-all but they were too late. A fist came flying out of the melee and popped one of the officers on the jaw. He went down and the cops got serious. Raising their nightsticks, they laid into the crowd with a will.
While they were distracted, Buffy ran up the church steps, kicked open the doors and sprayed the room with Holy water. Anybody who smoked got staked. The congregation cowered on the floor under the benches thus freeing her to be as lethal as she needed to be. Five piles of ash later, she had cleared the church. Looking around, she saw no sign of Adam. He must have fled after the battle started. She would have found the subterranean opening that the monsters used, but figured that could wait. There was no way she was going down in a tunnel by herself anyway. She started helping people up and ushering them out of the church.
The riot was still in full swing but she managed to find Giles, fighting on the periphery, and pulled him out. The two of them located Xander. Willow had leaped on some guy’s back and was pummeling him. The three of them pulled her off and sent her back to the car. Graham surfaced next and Buffy, being the smallest, wound her way through the crowd, grabbed him and yanked him through the pulsating mob. It took five more minutes to find Riley. He and the biker were still slugging it out. Buffy waited till there was a lull and broke through to him taking three blows on her back and shoulders as she made her way across the fight. He was reluctant to go since his blood was up but she pinched a nerve in his shoulder and frog-marched him out of the battle.
When everybody was seated in the car, Giles drove away. Willow sat on Xander’s lap and Buffy was forced to sit on Riley’s. He didn’t mind at all but wisely kept his hands occupied staunching the blood flow from his nose at a glare from Rupert. They got back to the house and walked rather gingerly inside. The blows they had taken were starting to stiffen up and they needed to tend to the worst injuries.
Buffy and Willow cleaned scrapes and disinfected cuts. Riley needed a butterfly bandage over his eyebrow and Giles had split his lip. Graham’s nose was busted but not too badly and Xander had a large bruise over his kidneys. Willow had the beginnings of a black eye.
“What happened in the church?” Giles asked her gingerly around his cut mouth.
“Five vamps, no waiting. Dusted them and got the people out. No Adam. There must be an underground entrance into the church, but I wasn’t going down there alone.”
“Commendable foresight, love.”
Riley was holding an ice bag to his jaw. “We need to gather the troops and find that entrance. I have forty men. We can take him.”
“Can you? Or are you just going to get yourself killed?” Buffy said somewhat harshly.
“I’m a soldier, Buffy. Risking my life is what I do.”
“I appreciate that, Riley, but there are extenuating circumstances here. We have no idea how many demons Adam has convinced to go along with him. I don’t want to see you parted out like a junker car because you made the wrong move.”
He pushed his chest out. “You do care about me!” He gave Giles a triumphant look.
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Riley, you are a powerful ally. You have access to military manpower and weapons that we don’t. Plus, you’re human. It’s my job to protect humans, even when they’re being big macho pains-in-the-ass.”
He looked sulky. “We’re going to find that tunnel tomorrow and if we engage the enemy, we will win.”
She sighed. “Fine. Leave me a phone number where I can call to have your bodies picked up, OK?”
“Geez, Buffy. Pretty pessimistic aren’t you?” Xander said from under a wet washcloth applied to his eyes. He had a great deal of respect for the military mostly stemming from his stint as a soldier during Halloween several years ago.
“Xand, I’m being realistic. If we go charging off, splitting our forces, we’re going to lose, big time.”
“I agree with Buffy on this one,” Willow said. “We need concrete plans, not just hunt and hope you get lucky.”
Graham nodded at the redhead. “Yeah, Ri. I agree with Willow. I’ve been thinking… Why can’t we locate all the access tunnels and block them one at a time, leaving just one open at a location of our choosing? We could pick them off when they come out to feed. At the very least, we could cut down the numbers against us.”
Riley frowned at his second-in-command, then sighed and nodded. “I thought Adam had wiped all the plans—we don’t even know all the entrances into the place.”
Willow cleared her throat. “Uh, actually…I may have stumbled on some floor plans during some research a while back.”
Riley looked shocked. “You hacked into top secret military databases?”
She looked alarmed. “No, no hacking was involved. I just sort of slipped in between some pretty obvious cracks. Really. Anybody could have found them.”
When the soldier would have argued, Giles stepped in. “Look here, how Willow obtained the information is immaterial at this point. What is important is that we can find and block the access tunnels.”
Buffy seconded his suggestion and gave Riley a hard look. He backed down but made a mental note to commandeer Willow’s computer after this was over. She couldn’t go around hacking into government sites whenever she felt like it.