Don't Go Solo : Part 3 - Walk on the Mild Side
Title: Walk on the Mild Side
Series: Don't Go Solo
Pairing: N/A
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence, and references to sex
Setting: post-He's No Jack sparrow and post-Introspect, Brazil
Word Count: 2,663 words
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All characters, places, and events are the property of the aforementioned and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary: They're a long way from where they started. They're a longer way from where they're going. Xander learns it's a little like riding an explosive bicycle.
When he didn’t get married, Xander had learned a lot of things about his friends that he might have been served to learn a lot earlier. All of them-Buffy, Willow, even Dawn-had reacted in ways that, now, seemed too obvious to never have considered.
Of course, that hadn’t been one of his most intelligent courses of action to have taken, but still.
Buffy had been the best about it. That is, she had left well enough alone and not tried to contact him beyond one or two messages on his answering machine. She hadn’t gone looking for him, she hadn’t asked around about him, she hadn’t tried to hire a private detective to figure out where he had gone. In retrospect, a lot of that probably had something to do with her own issues, and how distracting they were, or how wrapped up in them she was, or whatever.
Willow, on the other hand, had been almost relentless in her pursuit of him. He couldn’t go to his apartment without seeing signs of her presence-even a rolled up sleeping bag that was evident of her having stayed over, waiting for him the second night after. Several dozen messages on his machine, as if he would have missed the several dozen before that. And more than once, he had ducked back into a bar at the sight of her red hair glinting in the sunshine.
Dawn had oscillated between the two, but she wasn’t exactly on his mind just then.
His cell phone buzzed for the seventh time in ten minutes, and he only glanced at the screen momentarily before dismissing the call. If Willow visited his room and he was in the bathroom, she called him in worry. If she lost him in the crowd, she called him in worry. If she-
His phone buzzed again. If she happened to find that he had slipped away from the complex to take a walk, she called him in worry. Which made sense, on some level, although he couldn’t help but wonder if she had some way of knowing that the neighborhood he was actually walking in wasn’t the one the complex had been in. Or if this neighborhood were as rotten as it looked.
What was a good name for this kind of area? Oh, yeah, red-light district.
Brazil had different ways of doing things. The women on the streets weren’t exactly the ruined images of femininity that they tended to be in the States. They were dressed sexually, but becomingly. Cars didn’t pull up for arrangements to be made through the window, but the girls instead waited for their clients at designated appointment times.
The street must have been part of the greater warehouse district in older days, that was the only way to explain the unbelievable difference between the street attire and the buildings themselves. Large, boxy buildings with very little street access, corrugated garage doors that probably had to be opened with a chain, and absolutely no entrances via door-knob-having-doors.
Except for the sex shops. He didn’t even want to know about those, even though he figured that lack of prohibition over their operation probably meant that they could afford to be operated in a manner that was tasteful and not at all weird.
Willow had told him something, using that careful voice and careful expression, like she was afraid she was going to set him off. Like when she told him that she hadn’t actually liked Episode One, which hadn’t turned out to be a huge issue, since he hadn’t liked it, either.
First, she had told him that Brazil was different than the United States. He had taken that just about like he took everything she told him when what she was telling him was very, very obvious. Then she had told him that things like prostitution weren’t illegal here, and again, it hadn’t been an issue, since he figured he would have neither the time nor the drive to pursue it.
Then she had told him that, despite the fact that prostitution was legal, there was a great deal of human trafficking happening in Brazil, as well. In Rio. Not even very far from where their complex was located.
That-
He hadn’t taken it quite as well. He had learned not to say the first thing that popped into his head, since saying the wrong thing at the wrong time in Africa could often result in getting your head blown off, but he had very nearly asked her if the reason she had brought him to Brazil was because of his experience in dealing with human trafficking.
In this case, trafficking for sexual exploitation. It also occurred to him-which it shouldn’t have, because it w as indicative of how much he had changed over the past year-that he knew from experience that slayers’ muscles were good for more than just fighting. It was a crude thought, one he didn’t like to attribute to thoughts about one good friend and one best friend, particularly when the issue of muscles and what she could do with them were still a touchy subject where the latter was involved.
Human trafficking of slayers. That was one of the main reasons for setting up the complex in Brazil of all countries in South America. Xander held no illusions that it didn’t happen elsewhere, but he couldn’t deny that attacking the heart of the problem was their best bet.
It bothered him less than it should have that he didn’t immediately wonder about the one or two slayers that might be caught in the trafficking networks outside Brazil, where things were quieter, shadier, and harder to find.
Buffy and Willow had come here for something, without telling him about it until they had gotten back. Even then, details had been scant-almost as scant as the clothing the two of them had been wearing-and Willow wouldn’t tell him much more beyond the fact that she had been meeting a contact. Xander knew about contacts, although there was a good chance that most of Willow’s contacts hadn’t been made because they had failed in killing her. If they knew her, then they would probably never try.
A small comfort when visiting the actual street, and despite the taste and the legality, it made him a little sick to his stomach to think that Willow was thriving in a place like this.
His phone buzzed again, and again, he dismissed the call.
She had told him, and then she had begged him not to go crazy or do anything crazy. Or be crazy, in general, and he had begged her to stop saying “crazy,” because every time she did, her eyes got wide like they were back in second grade and he was trying out swear words for the first time. And he had agreed, which had been easy, because that had been back on the plane and it was easy to be honest and kind with your friends when you had a fear of flying and any moment could be your last.
Now, though, he was pissed that he hadn’t even asked her to give him any details she may have found. And it had only then occurred to him that she hadn’t brought him here because he had experience with these kinds of people, but because she wanted to try to keep him from going overboard with the good fight. Because now that he had experience with these people, he didn’t know how to do much besides fight these people.
That Willow had figured that out before him was par for the course, though, and it was a small comfort that she still knew him well enough to call his actions, even if he didn’t feel so much like he knew himself anymore.
Buzz. Click.
He was fairly certain that crosswalks worked the same in every country they were utilized, but that didn’t keep the sedan coming in from his left from screeching to a halt with a blaring horn, stopping about a foot later than would have been most beneficial to his side.
He tried putting his weight on the hood and just absorbing the hit, but he was too off balance and was flung to the side, halfway into a street otherwise devoid of traffic.
“Right, no, okay,” he groaned, waiting for the wave of nausea he had come to associate with being tossed farther than was reasonable to subside. “Also? Ouch.”
He heard a car door open and then slam shut, and it wasn’t a sympathy slam shut, a Oh, God, I hit you, are you okay!? Really, more of a pissed slam shut, a What the hell’s the matter with you, you son of a bitch!?
Right, unreasonable of me to try walking across a crosswalk.
He thought to go ahead and say as much, but instead screwed his eye shut and waited for the pain of the hit to subside. At the very least, it didn’t feel like anything was broken.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, you son of a bitch!?”
Well, he’d called that one, but he hadn’t expected so youthful and feminine a voice to belt it. When he opened his eye, he wondered if he looked surprised to see a girl that couldn’t have been older than eighteen standing over him, glaring like a monster and clenching her fists like a mafia leg breaker. He didn’t feel particularly surprised, but that was mostly because the strongest and scariest women in his experience were all young women that didn’t look like they could lift a newspaper.
For half a second, he was afraid that she was going to stomp his face in, and then he remembered that slayers were part of a very minor minority, and assuming that any random girl he came across in the street could be a slayer was well into idiocy.
She hefted him from the road with one hand and, still glaring, set him to standing again.
Well.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you hurt or not?”
Xander blinked at her, and the expression on her face told him that he didn’t look nearly as surprised as he should have. Wariness, maybe, or something like challenge, and he wondered if, perhaps, it would be a good idea to have a minor freak out to calm her down.
“Oh,” he said. “Um. Yeah. I mean no. Not, uh-not hurt.”
“You’re not hurt?” she asked. She didn’t look any nicer as she said it, and he wasn’t any less afraid of her braining him against the hood of her sedan, but it was striking how much she reminded him of Kennedy when she was reaching out and trying to do something with a modicum of friendliness.
“Well, I mean, subjectively,” he said. “I did just get hit by a car.” Her look was death. “But, ah, considering that, no, not hurt.”
His phone buzzed. He whacked the pocket it was in, and it thankfully went silent.
“Fine,” she said. “Well-look, I can’t take you to the hospital or anything, but can you-”
Xander had learned to listen for the right thing. That was a very ambiguous skill to have, but it was a good one to have, as well. He knew when peeling tires meant someone was speeding away or speeding toward them. He knew when gunshots were being fired in his direction and when they were being fired away from him. He knew when people were screaming in battle fury and when they were screaming in fright.
He was still dizzy, but he caught the girl and lurched to the side, trying to ignore just how close those bullets felt, trying to ignore the way they pinged against the dented hood where she had bumped into him. Her windshield shattered-he didn’t know if her business were clandestine or not, but he hadn’t been in Brazil nearly long enough to raise anyone’s ire.
Not like this was his first drive by.
He hit a garbage can on the way down with a loud clang, heard the dusty sound of bullets hitting brick, raining flecks of ceramic down on him and his newest drive by target buddy, before the peeling of tires were more away than coming. He still heard screams, fought through the adrenaline surge to make sense of the situation.
People running, people screaming-obvious-and he felt like he was back in Africa, except for the fact that the street signs were all in Portuguese.
“No, no, no, no!” the girl shrieked as she clambered to her feet, stomping after the retreating car for a few steps before she realized it would be fruitless. Xander, always slower in picking himself up after an explosion than the girls he tended to fight with, had only managed to stand back up by the time she was back on him, pointing wildly at the retreating car. “Do you realize what you just did!?”
It took every ounce of his willpower not to sarcastically mention that he had just tugged her right out of the way of a stream of bullets. Considering the fact that most people who ended up getting shot at-maybe it was a little hypocritical to think this-weren’t exactly the best people in the world, he wasn’t sure how she’d react if he did.
“Um,” he offered. His phone buzzed. “I-no?”
“Look, that car-I need to catch that car, okay!?”
He didn’t know why she thought he was trying to stop her, because he had adopted the stance he had typically used that last year in Sunnydale whenever Dawn had hugged him. That stance that acknowledge the fact that Dawn didn’t exactly have the figure of a little girl, and thus hugs had to be careful. Hands up and away was, of course, the best way to accomplish that.
If the passersby hadn’t been running and screaming, they might have thought a fully grown man shying away from a smallish girl who probably hadn’t even broken free of her teenage years wasn’t exactly a glowing example of masculinity.
“They’re moving girls, all right?” she went on. “I was supposed to meet and negotiate-I have to leave now, okay!?”
He wasn’t stopping her. Now he was very not stopping her. He didn’t know if she felt bad for hitting him with the sedan. She didn’t look like it, but it wouldn’t have surprised him.
Slayers always had their hearts in the right place.
“Right,” he said, nodding. It was as if she had been waiting for his permission, because she bolted for the bullet-riddled sedan. It was probably his fault, honestly. If she were trying to arrange a meeting with human traffickers, and if she were a slayer, then there was a good chance she was trying to find out about the girls that were like her. And if that were the case, he could only hope it was so that she could save them. Her clothes, her stance-all of it was high class and regal. Kind of like Cordelia.
If she did this stuff from the inside, he wouldn’t have been particularly surprised.
“What’s your name?” he called after her as she opened the driver’s side door. She paused only long enough to fix him with a look.
It did surprise him when she didn’t automatically glance at the eye patch.
“Michelle,” she said, eyes on his.
She didn’t hop into the car, despite the fact that there was a car speeding away even then. She just looked at him, and he liked to think that part of it was that she was a slayer, and the other part was that he was a Watcher.
Whatever that meant nowadays.
“Michelle,” he repeated. His phone buzzed, and he tugged it out. Willow’s name flashed insistently on the screen.
He dismissed the call.
“Well, Michelle. Want some help?”
Huh. I smell action a-coming. Fancy that.
Hope you liked it.
All the best.
The people will live on. The learning and bumbling people will live on.
-Carl Sandburg
Series: Don't Go Solo
Pairing: N/A
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence, and references to sex
Setting: post-He's No Jack sparrow and post-Introspect, Brazil
Word Count: 2,663 words
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All characters, places, and events are the property of the aforementioned and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary: They're a long way from where they started. They're a longer way from where they're going. Xander learns it's a little like riding an explosive bicycle.
When he didn’t get married, Xander had learned a lot of things about his friends that he might have been served to learn a lot earlier. All of them-Buffy, Willow, even Dawn-had reacted in ways that, now, seemed too obvious to never have considered.
Of course, that hadn’t been one of his most intelligent courses of action to have taken, but still.
Buffy had been the best about it. That is, she had left well enough alone and not tried to contact him beyond one or two messages on his answering machine. She hadn’t gone looking for him, she hadn’t asked around about him, she hadn’t tried to hire a private detective to figure out where he had gone. In retrospect, a lot of that probably had something to do with her own issues, and how distracting they were, or how wrapped up in them she was, or whatever.
Willow, on the other hand, had been almost relentless in her pursuit of him. He couldn’t go to his apartment without seeing signs of her presence-even a rolled up sleeping bag that was evident of her having stayed over, waiting for him the second night after. Several dozen messages on his machine, as if he would have missed the several dozen before that. And more than once, he had ducked back into a bar at the sight of her red hair glinting in the sunshine.
Dawn had oscillated between the two, but she wasn’t exactly on his mind just then.
His cell phone buzzed for the seventh time in ten minutes, and he only glanced at the screen momentarily before dismissing the call. If Willow visited his room and he was in the bathroom, she called him in worry. If she lost him in the crowd, she called him in worry. If she-
His phone buzzed again. If she happened to find that he had slipped away from the complex to take a walk, she called him in worry. Which made sense, on some level, although he couldn’t help but wonder if she had some way of knowing that the neighborhood he was actually walking in wasn’t the one the complex had been in. Or if this neighborhood were as rotten as it looked.
What was a good name for this kind of area? Oh, yeah, red-light district.
Brazil had different ways of doing things. The women on the streets weren’t exactly the ruined images of femininity that they tended to be in the States. They were dressed sexually, but becomingly. Cars didn’t pull up for arrangements to be made through the window, but the girls instead waited for their clients at designated appointment times.
The street must have been part of the greater warehouse district in older days, that was the only way to explain the unbelievable difference between the street attire and the buildings themselves. Large, boxy buildings with very little street access, corrugated garage doors that probably had to be opened with a chain, and absolutely no entrances via door-knob-having-doors.
Except for the sex shops. He didn’t even want to know about those, even though he figured that lack of prohibition over their operation probably meant that they could afford to be operated in a manner that was tasteful and not at all weird.
Willow had told him something, using that careful voice and careful expression, like she was afraid she was going to set him off. Like when she told him that she hadn’t actually liked Episode One, which hadn’t turned out to be a huge issue, since he hadn’t liked it, either.
First, she had told him that Brazil was different than the United States. He had taken that just about like he took everything she told him when what she was telling him was very, very obvious. Then she had told him that things like prostitution weren’t illegal here, and again, it hadn’t been an issue, since he figured he would have neither the time nor the drive to pursue it.
Then she had told him that, despite the fact that prostitution was legal, there was a great deal of human trafficking happening in Brazil, as well. In Rio. Not even very far from where their complex was located.
That-
He hadn’t taken it quite as well. He had learned not to say the first thing that popped into his head, since saying the wrong thing at the wrong time in Africa could often result in getting your head blown off, but he had very nearly asked her if the reason she had brought him to Brazil was because of his experience in dealing with human trafficking.
In this case, trafficking for sexual exploitation. It also occurred to him-which it shouldn’t have, because it w as indicative of how much he had changed over the past year-that he knew from experience that slayers’ muscles were good for more than just fighting. It was a crude thought, one he didn’t like to attribute to thoughts about one good friend and one best friend, particularly when the issue of muscles and what she could do with them were still a touchy subject where the latter was involved.
Human trafficking of slayers. That was one of the main reasons for setting up the complex in Brazil of all countries in South America. Xander held no illusions that it didn’t happen elsewhere, but he couldn’t deny that attacking the heart of the problem was their best bet.
It bothered him less than it should have that he didn’t immediately wonder about the one or two slayers that might be caught in the trafficking networks outside Brazil, where things were quieter, shadier, and harder to find.
Buffy and Willow had come here for something, without telling him about it until they had gotten back. Even then, details had been scant-almost as scant as the clothing the two of them had been wearing-and Willow wouldn’t tell him much more beyond the fact that she had been meeting a contact. Xander knew about contacts, although there was a good chance that most of Willow’s contacts hadn’t been made because they had failed in killing her. If they knew her, then they would probably never try.
A small comfort when visiting the actual street, and despite the taste and the legality, it made him a little sick to his stomach to think that Willow was thriving in a place like this.
His phone buzzed again, and again, he dismissed the call.
She had told him, and then she had begged him not to go crazy or do anything crazy. Or be crazy, in general, and he had begged her to stop saying “crazy,” because every time she did, her eyes got wide like they were back in second grade and he was trying out swear words for the first time. And he had agreed, which had been easy, because that had been back on the plane and it was easy to be honest and kind with your friends when you had a fear of flying and any moment could be your last.
Now, though, he was pissed that he hadn’t even asked her to give him any details she may have found. And it had only then occurred to him that she hadn’t brought him here because he had experience with these kinds of people, but because she wanted to try to keep him from going overboard with the good fight. Because now that he had experience with these people, he didn’t know how to do much besides fight these people.
That Willow had figured that out before him was par for the course, though, and it was a small comfort that she still knew him well enough to call his actions, even if he didn’t feel so much like he knew himself anymore.
Buzz. Click.
He was fairly certain that crosswalks worked the same in every country they were utilized, but that didn’t keep the sedan coming in from his left from screeching to a halt with a blaring horn, stopping about a foot later than would have been most beneficial to his side.
He tried putting his weight on the hood and just absorbing the hit, but he was too off balance and was flung to the side, halfway into a street otherwise devoid of traffic.
“Right, no, okay,” he groaned, waiting for the wave of nausea he had come to associate with being tossed farther than was reasonable to subside. “Also? Ouch.”
He heard a car door open and then slam shut, and it wasn’t a sympathy slam shut, a Oh, God, I hit you, are you okay!? Really, more of a pissed slam shut, a What the hell’s the matter with you, you son of a bitch!?
Right, unreasonable of me to try walking across a crosswalk.
He thought to go ahead and say as much, but instead screwed his eye shut and waited for the pain of the hit to subside. At the very least, it didn’t feel like anything was broken.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, you son of a bitch!?”
Well, he’d called that one, but he hadn’t expected so youthful and feminine a voice to belt it. When he opened his eye, he wondered if he looked surprised to see a girl that couldn’t have been older than eighteen standing over him, glaring like a monster and clenching her fists like a mafia leg breaker. He didn’t feel particularly surprised, but that was mostly because the strongest and scariest women in his experience were all young women that didn’t look like they could lift a newspaper.
For half a second, he was afraid that she was going to stomp his face in, and then he remembered that slayers were part of a very minor minority, and assuming that any random girl he came across in the street could be a slayer was well into idiocy.
She hefted him from the road with one hand and, still glaring, set him to standing again.
Well.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you hurt or not?”
Xander blinked at her, and the expression on her face told him that he didn’t look nearly as surprised as he should have. Wariness, maybe, or something like challenge, and he wondered if, perhaps, it would be a good idea to have a minor freak out to calm her down.
“Oh,” he said. “Um. Yeah. I mean no. Not, uh-not hurt.”
“You’re not hurt?” she asked. She didn’t look any nicer as she said it, and he wasn’t any less afraid of her braining him against the hood of her sedan, but it was striking how much she reminded him of Kennedy when she was reaching out and trying to do something with a modicum of friendliness.
“Well, I mean, subjectively,” he said. “I did just get hit by a car.” Her look was death. “But, ah, considering that, no, not hurt.”
His phone buzzed. He whacked the pocket it was in, and it thankfully went silent.
“Fine,” she said. “Well-look, I can’t take you to the hospital or anything, but can you-”
Xander had learned to listen for the right thing. That was a very ambiguous skill to have, but it was a good one to have, as well. He knew when peeling tires meant someone was speeding away or speeding toward them. He knew when gunshots were being fired in his direction and when they were being fired away from him. He knew when people were screaming in battle fury and when they were screaming in fright.
He was still dizzy, but he caught the girl and lurched to the side, trying to ignore just how close those bullets felt, trying to ignore the way they pinged against the dented hood where she had bumped into him. Her windshield shattered-he didn’t know if her business were clandestine or not, but he hadn’t been in Brazil nearly long enough to raise anyone’s ire.
Not like this was his first drive by.
He hit a garbage can on the way down with a loud clang, heard the dusty sound of bullets hitting brick, raining flecks of ceramic down on him and his newest drive by target buddy, before the peeling of tires were more away than coming. He still heard screams, fought through the adrenaline surge to make sense of the situation.
People running, people screaming-obvious-and he felt like he was back in Africa, except for the fact that the street signs were all in Portuguese.
“No, no, no, no!” the girl shrieked as she clambered to her feet, stomping after the retreating car for a few steps before she realized it would be fruitless. Xander, always slower in picking himself up after an explosion than the girls he tended to fight with, had only managed to stand back up by the time she was back on him, pointing wildly at the retreating car. “Do you realize what you just did!?”
It took every ounce of his willpower not to sarcastically mention that he had just tugged her right out of the way of a stream of bullets. Considering the fact that most people who ended up getting shot at-maybe it was a little hypocritical to think this-weren’t exactly the best people in the world, he wasn’t sure how she’d react if he did.
“Um,” he offered. His phone buzzed. “I-no?”
“Look, that car-I need to catch that car, okay!?”
He didn’t know why she thought he was trying to stop her, because he had adopted the stance he had typically used that last year in Sunnydale whenever Dawn had hugged him. That stance that acknowledge the fact that Dawn didn’t exactly have the figure of a little girl, and thus hugs had to be careful. Hands up and away was, of course, the best way to accomplish that.
If the passersby hadn’t been running and screaming, they might have thought a fully grown man shying away from a smallish girl who probably hadn’t even broken free of her teenage years wasn’t exactly a glowing example of masculinity.
“They’re moving girls, all right?” she went on. “I was supposed to meet and negotiate-I have to leave now, okay!?”
He wasn’t stopping her. Now he was very not stopping her. He didn’t know if she felt bad for hitting him with the sedan. She didn’t look like it, but it wouldn’t have surprised him.
Slayers always had their hearts in the right place.
“Right,” he said, nodding. It was as if she had been waiting for his permission, because she bolted for the bullet-riddled sedan. It was probably his fault, honestly. If she were trying to arrange a meeting with human traffickers, and if she were a slayer, then there was a good chance she was trying to find out about the girls that were like her. And if that were the case, he could only hope it was so that she could save them. Her clothes, her stance-all of it was high class and regal. Kind of like Cordelia.
If she did this stuff from the inside, he wouldn’t have been particularly surprised.
“What’s your name?” he called after her as she opened the driver’s side door. She paused only long enough to fix him with a look.
It did surprise him when she didn’t automatically glance at the eye patch.
“Michelle,” she said, eyes on his.
She didn’t hop into the car, despite the fact that there was a car speeding away even then. She just looked at him, and he liked to think that part of it was that she was a slayer, and the other part was that he was a Watcher.
Whatever that meant nowadays.
“Michelle,” he repeated. His phone buzzed, and he tugged it out. Willow’s name flashed insistently on the screen.
He dismissed the call.
“Well, Michelle. Want some help?”
Huh. I smell action a-coming. Fancy that.
Hope you liked it.
All the best.
The people will live on. The learning and bumbling people will live on.
-Carl Sandburg