REPOST: Fan Fic: Just a Day in the Life (1/4)

[Erin <erin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

TITLE: Just a Day in the Life
AUTHOR: Erin (erin@xxxxxxxxxxx)
SPOILERS: Some spoilers through Doomed (Season 4)
RATING: PG-13 at worst. Probably not even that. It is a Buffy/Willow
fic, so if that bothers you, or it's illegal to even think of a Slayer
and a Witch getting it on, then just don't read it. Or move.
DISCLAIMER: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all characters belong to Joss
Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox. I'm just borrowing them for a bit.
I'll put them back when I'm done, no worse for wear (but maybe a
little happier).
ARCHIVE: Currently, none. Just ask, I'd love to say yes.
FEEDBACK: Constructive comments are encouraged.
SUMMARY: (Buffy/Willow) Buffy has more trouble than she can handle,
between dealing with Riley, her feelings for Willow, and a rogue
Warlock who is out on a power grab.

Chapter 1

"Y'know, usually people run away from vampires. I think we're
the only ones who actually run toward them," Willow remarked, fighting
her way through the dense brush.

"I don't want to let him get away," Buffy replied, "and I
think I saw him run over here--" Buffy's words were abruptly cut off
as she entered a small clearing.

"Buffy? What is it? Are you ok--" Willow caught up to her
friend, and saw what had silenced her. The forest clearing wasn't
large, maybe 15 feet across. A makeshift altar dominated the center
of the clearing, and on the altar was the body of a man. A rather
unfortunate man.

Buffy advanced to the altar, cautiously. Her slayer senses
weren't tingling, which usually meant that whatever did this was long
gone, but she didn't survive this long by taking unnecessary risks.
She reached the altar, and checked the dead man's pulse. Not
surprisingly, there wasn't one.

"What do you think caused it?" Willow asked, drawing up beside
the Slayer.

"Offhand, I'd say that he was strangled," Buffy responded,
quietly. "Either that, or the braided rope choker his girlfriend
gave him for Christmas was way too tight." She pointed at the
obvious cause of death: a slim, waxed cord tied tight around the
man's neck. "Strange, though..."

"Strange? I'll say it's strange," Willow swallowed,
nervously.

"No, it's strange that he didn't put up a struggle." Buffy
examined the scene carefully.

"Well, maybe it happened too fast. Maybe it was like, bam!,
he was choked to death."

"I'd believe that if he were slashed to death, or stabbed,
or something. But strangulation usually takes a little while,"
Buffy replied, frowning. "C'mon, we'd better go tell Giles."

As the girls left the clearing, a shadow detached itself
from the other shadows at the edge of the clearing, and followed them.

* * *

"What can you ladies tell me about the corpse?" Giles
inquired. The girls had come to his home late at night, sharing
their news of the man's death. Although technically he was no
longer Buffy's Watcher, he was still the one most knowledgeable
in demon lore and legend, and he took Buffy's safety very seriously.

"Well, he was dead--" "Strangled--" "It was some kind of
cord, or rope--" "And he was on this altar--" "Yeah, altar, and
he didn't struggle or anything--" "No, no struggle--"

"All right," Giles held up his hand, and the two girls
stopped. "It sounds to me like a ritual sacrifice of some sort,
although the fact that he didn't struggle hints towards some
type of mind control. Did you notice anything else about the
scene?"

The girls thought for a moment, then shook their heads.
"All right then," Giles continued, "I don't think there's anything
else we can accomplish tonight. I do think we should meet in the
morning, however."

Buffy nodded. "I'll call Xander and tell him to meet
us. I'll have him bring Spike, maybe he'll prove useful."

Giles agreed. "Yes, well, goodnight ladies. See you
tomorrow."

Buffy and Willow headed home in companionable silence.
The girls had been best friends for over three years, from when Buffy
and her mother first moved to Sunnydale. Buffy was a typical
teenage girl; she liked fashion, makeup, boys, and music. She
was also the Slayer, which was completely atypical. She had
lost many friends because of the secret she had to keep.

Willow was completely the opposite. She was a brain and
a computer geek, which meant that she occupied a level of social
strata in high school which was below that of even goths and
skateboarders. Her fondest wish in high school was to be
ignored, but she never got that wish. The popular girls would
see her and make cruel jokes about her clothes, or the fact
that she never went on dates. The popular boys would see her
and sneer, or make crude jokes at her expense. And then she
found out the truth about the Slayer.

Buffy was glad to finally have a friend who knew the
truth, someone she could talk to and not hide things from;
Willow was glad just to have a friend, period. She had known
Xander for a long time, but having a guy friend, especially a
perpetually-distracted-by-the-oppposite-sex guy friend, just
wasn't the same.

* * *

Xander and Spike were already there when Buffy and Willow
arrived the next morning, bearing doughnuts. "Hi gang!" Buffy
cried out. "We brought yummy doughnuts. I even bought a jelly
for Spike, so that maybe he could bite into it and suck all the
red out."

Spike gave her a disgusted look, and said in his best
sarcastic voice, "Oh, yummy. Finally, something to dunk in my
mug of warm blood." Spike was a vampire, but he had been
"defanged" by some experiment of a secret organization known
only as the Initiative. Not literally defanged, but whenever
he tried to take a victim, he would get massive pain shooting
through his skull, rendering him incapable of killing.
Needless to say, it added to his already cheery disposition.

Giles wandered in from the back room, as usual with a
book in his hand. "Ah, good, you're both here. I've been
doing a fair amount of reading on ritual sacrifice, but
unfortunately it's a very broad topic."

"Can we skip the boring stuff and get right to the
virgins?" Xander quipped, around a mouthful of doughnut. Buffy
shot him a look.

"Well, actually," Giles continued, "Most every culture
and belief has, at one time, flirted with the idea of human
sacrifice, some more than others. Of course, most people are
fairly familiar with the Aztecs and Druids--"

"Oh, I know!" Willow broke in. "An ancient priest caste
of the Celtic tribes, right?"

"Yes, Willow, that's correct." Willow smiled, delighted.
Giles continued, "But other religions have based some beliefs
and myths on human sacrifice. Christianity and Judaism, to name
two of the most popular."

"So what do we have here, some sort of priest who is
getting too literal with the 'this is my body, this is my blood'
type of thing?" Spike drawled. It wasn't easy to drawl with
an English accent, but Spike managed.

Giles glanced over at the vampire, "Well, no. At least,
It's much too early to tell."

"Well, I wish I could say that we had more luck, but
the news this morning didn't have a whole lot of details,"
Buffy added.

"Hey, I can crack into the police computers, to see if
their investigation turned up anything," said Willow, excitedly.
Giles nodded at her, and said, "That would be a good idea I
think, you can set up over there." He nodded at a corner table.

Willow jumped up and started setting up her laptop.
"Great, our resident hacker strikes again," Buffy grinned at
her friend. Willow, in mock-indignant tones, replied, "A
hacker is someone who writes code. A cracker is someone who
breaks into computers." She grinned, and winked at Buffy
before continuing, "It just so happens that I can do both."

"Well, I will continue my research while you do that,
Willow," Giles said. "And Xander will watch the telly--"

"All right!" Xander jumped onto the couch, grabbing
the remote as he did so.

"--local news only, please," Giles continued, unfazed.
"We want to see if they have released any more information."

Buffy rose to her feet. "Well, there's no slayage
to speak of yet, so I think if it's ok with you, I'm going to
meet Riley. We have a lunch date."

A spasm of...anguish? pain? overtook Willow. It was
gone almost as soon as it began, and no one caught it.
No one, that is, except for Giles.

"All right Buffy, we'll let you know if we find
anything." Giles smiled at the girl, but that look of
Willow's troubled him. Was it something about Riley? Was
Willow's wiccan intuition bothered? He would have to ask
her later. There was something about the man he didn't
quite trust. This whole business with the commando squad,
and the secret organization called "The Initiative" that they
served didn't sit well with the ex-Watcher. He was always
something of a techno-phobe, preferring old, dusty books to
net research, but there was something genuinely disturbing in the
experiments the Initiative was allegedly conducting. Giles
resolved to ask Willow about her unease at the first
opportunity.

* * *

Buffy looked across the table at Riley, trying to
concentrate on what he was saying. When they worked together,
everything was like magic; they complemented each other
beautifully with their training, and everything seemed to click.
And it was nice, going out with a cute guy who wasn't
totally helpless. But in this kind of situation, in this
no-immediate-danger type situation...well...

"...so I decided to get the Accord. Better gas
mileage," Riley finished. "You ok, Buffy? You look..."

"No, I'm fine!" Buffy said, just a little too
quickly. *Got to think of something to say...* "So, did
you hear about that murder last night?" *Oh, now that was
romantic...Good one, Buffy.*

"Yeah, I heard about it, but it's nothing we're
getting involved in," Riley replied. "We'll leave that for
the locals. Probably some kind of Satan-worshipping psycho,
anyway."

"Ah, I see. You don't deal with Satan-worshipping
psychos, only demons?"

"Only what? Subterraneans, you mean?" Riley looked
at the Slayer, quizzically.

"Why do you call them that?"

Riley shrugged. "I dunno, that's what they are.
Subterranean animals."

Buffy nearly choked on her soda. "Animals? Oh,
they are SO not animals."

"What would you call them, then?"

"They're demons. You know, otherworldly evil
creatures. Subterranean animals...those are like moles,
or...or gophers. When you're staring at a nine foot horned...
thing... you know that it's not a gopher," Buffy concluded.

Riley looked at Buffy. Was that a patronizing look?
"There are no such things as demons, or any of that hocus pocus
stuff. Magic, demons, devils, it's all a cop out for things
people don't want to deal with. They're animals, plain and
simple."

"Well, some of them used to be human. How do you explain
vampires?" Buffy challenged.

"A disease, transmitted through the bloodstream, that
alters the victim's DNA."

"Werewolves?"

"A lunar-based psychosis that is so powerfully believed in
that it can occasionally alter someone's appearance. Mind over
matter."

"Demons?"

"Just a different species of animal."

"Hellmouths?"

Riley shrugged. "It's just a crack in the earth. Nothing
mystical about that."

Buffy sat back in her chair, bewildered. These past few years
of her life had all been about demons, vampires, prophesies... She had
seen magic first hand, and watched as her friend Willow slowly
mastered her powers. And here was Riley, dismissing it as so much
superstition?

*Guess it goes to show...* Buffy thought, *Only a few people
in this world really understand. Speaking of which...* Buffy looked
at her watch, and said, "Wow, I've got to go. I'm meeting up with
some friends, and you've probably got some...commando stuff to do or
something." She rose quickly from her chair in front of a bewildered
Riley.

"Yeah, sure, ok, I'll call you," Riley rose, and watched as
Buffy left. *Sometimes, I don't know if I'll ever understand her...*

* * *

Willow crossed the room and sat down beside Giles, her notes
and sketches neatly written on a legal tablet. "Yes, Willow," Giles
asked, "did you find something?"

Willow took a deep breath, and began. "Well, it looks like
Buffy was right about the victim not struggling. The autopsy turned
up no evidence of a struggle, no blood under the fingernails,
nothing. Also, their toxicology report turned up no drugs or other
medication."

"I see. Well, it does lend credence to our mind control
theory."

"Yep. Also, look at this..." Willow pointed at a sketch
she had made on the tablet. "This sign was found carved into the
top of the altar...That's why we didn't notice it before, the police
had to move the body to find it."

"Hmm, let me see..." Giles reached for the sketch, examining
it closely. "It's very familiar. Could you fetch me the Piggott
book, Willow? Oh, and Willow?" Giles stopped her, just as she was
getting up to retrieve the book.

"Yes? What is it, Giles?"

"Well, I couldn't help noticing your reaction when Buffy
mentioned meeting Riley."

"Oh." Willow dropped her head, slightly. She had hoped
no one noticed, especially Giles.

"Well, I'd like to know if there is something about him
that bothers you, something you're getting from your power. A
Wiccan intuition, if you will."

Willow cleared her throat before answering. "No, nothing
like that," she answered, weakly.

Giles seemed unconvinced. "Please, Willow, if there's
anything that makes you uncomfortable about this man, I'd like
to know what it is. It's possible you're sensing something the
rest of us cannot."

"Well, it's not like that exactly..."

"Willow, please..."

"Ok! It's...it's not any bad, evil vibe or anything. I'm
just...I'm just jealous, ok?" Willow dropped her head even
further, her hair covering her face.

Giles nodded. "You're jealous of Buffy for having Riley.
It will be alright, I'm sure you'll find--"

Willow let out a self-pitying laugh. "I'm not jealous
of Buffy. I'm jealous of Riley."

"Oh, I see, well..." Giles did a mental double-take. "OH,
I see...well." He wished he could say something comforting, but
he was quite out of his element and unsure as to how to proceed.
"Willow--"

"That's ok Giles," Willow cut him off. The sadness in
her voice broke his heart. "I've got some more research to do..."
She rose, and went back over to her laptop. Giles looked at her
speculatively for a long moment, and then left to retrieve another
book.

(End, Part 1)
--
"If you hurt her, I will beat you to death with a shovel. A
vague disclaimer is nobody's friend. Have fun!" - Willow
*email: erin@xxxxxxxxxxx