Willow: Downhill Headlong All the Way (PG13)
A mad scramble of a stream of consciousness fic for my last of 2012 (if LJ lets me post). Happy new year everyone, and may all your deadlines be reassuringly far away :)
Title Downhill Headlong All the Way
Characters Willow, Riley Finn (but my version is female)
Words 1800
Rating PG13
Prompt For the Which Witch Willow ficathon prompt: The Initiative tries to recruit Willow; set from What’s My Line, season 2, to an AU that’s roughly equivalent to The I In Team in season 4
It started slow. All the best seductions do. At first, it was just a little flattering additional attention. The occasional dinner. Sneaky meetings which no one else had to know about. Little things that added and mounted and brought Willow to the here and now.
She listens to herself, telling lies to her best friend, and she wonders whether it really, truly is worth it. Because they tell her it is. But Willow’s starting to have doubts.
*
The Initiative is not the name Willow would prefer the enterprise to have. It sounds sorta sinister. Faceless, nameless and not at all the transparent government initiative it is supposed to be. If the government wanted to hide this, the really should have called it the Southern California Large Pest Control Investigatory Commission or something. Something that says official. That says bureaucracy. That says ‘no one needs to look here, it’s really dull’.
But Willow guesses they assume no one will ask questions about army business.
They are wrong. From the start, Oz asks questions that make the recruiters nervous. Fortunately for them, he soon gets distracted by the whole ‘vampires are real’ revelation, and anyway Oz really isn’t interested in uncovering giant government conspiracies so much as playing guitar and controlling his wolf, so they’re pretty safe, turns out.
Willow keeps on with the meetings. She’s carefully vague with friends, even with Oz, and outright obfuscatory with her parents, though to be completely fair to herself that’s because Sheila Rosenberg has issues with almost any soulless global corporation aiming to recruit intelligent teens to capitalist drudgery, and not just the covert military types.
The summer Buffy goes AWOL, Willow takes an internship at the local research firm, affiliated to the university Psych department. And, obviously, an Initiative front. (Willow spends some time pondering how much of the local economy isn’t demonic or anti-demon-based. A few months later, she’ll understand that that’s just how Mayor Wilkins founded the city to be. Got to love a man with an evil plan.)
That summer is odd. She only sees three demons, and the staff expect her to be completely freaked by them. Willow has to try to think of reasons why she might not be, that don’t include phrases like ‘My best friend’s boyfriend was a vampire who turned evil - again - and killed our teacher.’ Or indeed, ‘My other best friend almost only dates demons. And Cordelia. Plus, did I mention Oz is a werewolf? So really, why would I be scared?’
Willow is learning how to pass for normal, in an insane world.
Riley helps. Riley’s cool. Riley reminds Willow a little of the person she (Willow) would like to be: confident, top of the class and cool with it, popular, geeky round the edges but unashamed. Riley wears her unusual name with pride, makes it seem like Riley Finn is the best possible name for a woman to have. Willow envies her.
Riley drops into conversation, a few times, how the Initiative supports promising students at UCSD. Bursaries, summer jobs, research opportunities. The kind of thing that can help to make a career. Willow starts to think, for the first time, that Harvard and Oxford and Stanford maybe aren’t obviously the best options she could possibly pursue.
But. But still she doesn’t entirely like the way the Initiative talks. Hostile sub-terrestrials, sure, gotta have a TLA for your enemy. But the more Willow thinks about it, the less sure she is whether every single demon ever is actually going to be evil. Those that the Initiative captures seem quietly bewildered for the most part. Or, occasionally, large and stupid. The Initiative is missing the worst of the demons, but Willow doesn’t really know how to bring that up with them. Also, if she’s honest, she doesn’t know whether they could cope if they did bring in someone really evil. Drusilla in these holding cells? She’d be out in days.
Which is when Willow really makes her decision. No, the Initiative isn’t perfect. But it has the right idea, it’s better than putting it all on Buffy to fix the entire world. Willow believes in big government, at least when it comes to exterminating massive demon threats affecting the whole of civilisation. Much better than secret Councils and silent sacrifices of teenage girls. But if it’s gonna be done, it has to be done right.
Also, Riley nods and smiles a whole lot while Willow spells this out, and this pleases Willow a whole lot. By the time she, Buffy and Oz join UCSD for real, Willow’s in pretty deep.
*
The thing is, at college, Buffy’s more in the noticing place. She doesn’t have Tragic Angel Angst for a distraction. She sees Willow’s absences. She asks questions about why Willow’s taking Psych as her science requirement, and how well she knows Riley. She notices how Willow and Oz aren’t as close any more, and Willow in extremis ends up suggesting some kind of gay crisis, instead of saying she’s drawing away from here werewolf lover because she’s scared he could end up on a slab at her workplace.
Buffy’s very understanding, in a ‘I totally get human sexuality lies on a spectrum, but I am so far over the straight end I could just choke on it’ way. Willow finds herself with that kind of thought more and more often nowadays. That Buffy’s not all that. That maybe Willow has more important friends now.
That’s really when she notices how she’s been seduced. Because really, isn’t this all about Buffy? Isn’t Buffy a better, more efficient slayer of demons than the whole of the Initiative so far?
Yes. Yes she is. And Willow really tries to remember that. It clears her head. A lot. But Willow also tries to work out how to fix it. Because it really shouldn’t just be Buffy any more.
Also, the thing about being seduced? Not just a figure of speech. Willow may or may not be enjoying spending a whole lot of naked time with wholesome Riley Finn. And that may or may not be distracting her from Buffy. And from Oz (who leaves, which is kind of helpful because he never really stopped asking the questions, just dialled it back till Willow could ignore them).
Oz leaves because of a freshly dead girl who is also a wolf, and Willow takes her corpse into the Initiative and has a little talk with Professor Walsh about what other kinds of demons are maybe out there, and how one might combat them. It goes a little something like this: you need someone that has a human individual’s ingenuity and memory; a few examples of animal/demons’ physical strength and special physical traits; a whole lot of computerised/robotic processing power. Plus a little nuclear reactor powered undead capability, and you’d really be there. That’s what would really help in the fight against the vampires and demons and forces of darkness. Not just one girl in all the world, but something new. And really? They wanted Willow originally for her brain, so...
Professor Walsh says, quietly, “I never thought Riley knew about 314.”
Willow says, “Well, no. But she knows quite a lot about computers. Also, she’s not real good about password security.” Because she’s Willow, you see, and Willow spends time thinking things through, and does research, and in general likes to ensure she is fully informed about major secret government organisations that are trying to seduce her. She adds, “But I think you have the right idea.” Maybe that’s a comfort to Professor Walsh.
The Professor is unwrapping a humanoid thing on the gurney, and it’s a weird Frankenstein creation, half-man, part computer, and lots of demonic whatchamajigs stuck on like bad make up, and this is not what Willow had in mind, even before he opens his eyes, and says, “Mother?” in a voice that doesn’t sound overly sentient or human to Willow.
Then Professor Walsh says something that’s so stupid Willow can hardly bear it. She says, “I have a prototype. But he needs work. And I’m not sure his brain is right for this. I need volunteers. Really committed people who-“ and she looks at Willow like she’s a delicious lunch, or a perfect hypothesis, and Willow - who does not want to become a Frankendroid in the hands of someone this lacking in vision - is forced to defend herself with what turns out to be the arm of a Polgara demon that was laying about ready for use, and now it seems like Willow’s a murderer.
But she’s still Willow. And she’s never been stupid. And now she’s sure she knows better than some people she used to have a lot of respect for. So she gets out of 314, taking quite a large part of the processor core for the prototype with her, and fetches Riley with a smile and a kiss and a, “C’m on honey, I want to go to the Bronze tonight.” And she leaves the Initiative compound for what is definitely going to be the last time.
*
And now Willow is here, at Giles’s apartment, with Riley and Buffy and Xander and Anya and - for some reason - Spike. She’s holding the Polgara arm, which also has a spike, and she’s possibly a little on the edge of hysteria. She’s also holding the ickily dripping processor core from the badly-made prototype of the demon warrior race. And she’s telling them that she’s a murderer. And a whole lot about what the Initiative looks like, and claims to be, and how at the heart of it there’s a really good idea in the hands of really not so great people who are looking for volunteers, and how Willow is not, no sir, about to volunteer for that.
“Except... I still think that maybe Buffy shouldn’t have to carry this all alone. And they are right, about it maybe being better to create an army to face the bad guys. And we are the only other operation out there. I know we don’t have any money or resources or anything like that yet. And, obviously, the Initiative is gonna be hunting me and maybe all of us when they know what happened to Professor Walsh and what I took.”
Willow feels like she’s maybe over-emphasised the downside of the situation, just a little, because her whole audience looks depressed. “But maybe, just maybe... if we can survive the Initiative, and the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness, and make some money, and keep this secret, and work out how to make it like little moderate body enhancements instead of big scary Frankenstein creature creation... maybe, we might be able to help save the world. Like, permanently?”
Willow also feels like she has talked maybe a little too much, and her audience doesn’t immediately respond to her. “Guys? What do you think? Do we have a plan?”
***
Title Downhill Headlong All the Way
Characters Willow, Riley Finn (but my version is female)
Words 1800
Rating PG13
Prompt For the Which Witch Willow ficathon prompt: The Initiative tries to recruit Willow; set from What’s My Line, season 2, to an AU that’s roughly equivalent to The I In Team in season 4
It started slow. All the best seductions do. At first, it was just a little flattering additional attention. The occasional dinner. Sneaky meetings which no one else had to know about. Little things that added and mounted and brought Willow to the here and now.
She listens to herself, telling lies to her best friend, and she wonders whether it really, truly is worth it. Because they tell her it is. But Willow’s starting to have doubts.
*
The Initiative is not the name Willow would prefer the enterprise to have. It sounds sorta sinister. Faceless, nameless and not at all the transparent government initiative it is supposed to be. If the government wanted to hide this, the really should have called it the Southern California Large Pest Control Investigatory Commission or something. Something that says official. That says bureaucracy. That says ‘no one needs to look here, it’s really dull’.
But Willow guesses they assume no one will ask questions about army business.
They are wrong. From the start, Oz asks questions that make the recruiters nervous. Fortunately for them, he soon gets distracted by the whole ‘vampires are real’ revelation, and anyway Oz really isn’t interested in uncovering giant government conspiracies so much as playing guitar and controlling his wolf, so they’re pretty safe, turns out.
Willow keeps on with the meetings. She’s carefully vague with friends, even with Oz, and outright obfuscatory with her parents, though to be completely fair to herself that’s because Sheila Rosenberg has issues with almost any soulless global corporation aiming to recruit intelligent teens to capitalist drudgery, and not just the covert military types.
The summer Buffy goes AWOL, Willow takes an internship at the local research firm, affiliated to the university Psych department. And, obviously, an Initiative front. (Willow spends some time pondering how much of the local economy isn’t demonic or anti-demon-based. A few months later, she’ll understand that that’s just how Mayor Wilkins founded the city to be. Got to love a man with an evil plan.)
That summer is odd. She only sees three demons, and the staff expect her to be completely freaked by them. Willow has to try to think of reasons why she might not be, that don’t include phrases like ‘My best friend’s boyfriend was a vampire who turned evil - again - and killed our teacher.’ Or indeed, ‘My other best friend almost only dates demons. And Cordelia. Plus, did I mention Oz is a werewolf? So really, why would I be scared?’
Willow is learning how to pass for normal, in an insane world.
Riley helps. Riley’s cool. Riley reminds Willow a little of the person she (Willow) would like to be: confident, top of the class and cool with it, popular, geeky round the edges but unashamed. Riley wears her unusual name with pride, makes it seem like Riley Finn is the best possible name for a woman to have. Willow envies her.
Riley drops into conversation, a few times, how the Initiative supports promising students at UCSD. Bursaries, summer jobs, research opportunities. The kind of thing that can help to make a career. Willow starts to think, for the first time, that Harvard and Oxford and Stanford maybe aren’t obviously the best options she could possibly pursue.
But. But still she doesn’t entirely like the way the Initiative talks. Hostile sub-terrestrials, sure, gotta have a TLA for your enemy. But the more Willow thinks about it, the less sure she is whether every single demon ever is actually going to be evil. Those that the Initiative captures seem quietly bewildered for the most part. Or, occasionally, large and stupid. The Initiative is missing the worst of the demons, but Willow doesn’t really know how to bring that up with them. Also, if she’s honest, she doesn’t know whether they could cope if they did bring in someone really evil. Drusilla in these holding cells? She’d be out in days.
Which is when Willow really makes her decision. No, the Initiative isn’t perfect. But it has the right idea, it’s better than putting it all on Buffy to fix the entire world. Willow believes in big government, at least when it comes to exterminating massive demon threats affecting the whole of civilisation. Much better than secret Councils and silent sacrifices of teenage girls. But if it’s gonna be done, it has to be done right.
Also, Riley nods and smiles a whole lot while Willow spells this out, and this pleases Willow a whole lot. By the time she, Buffy and Oz join UCSD for real, Willow’s in pretty deep.
*
The thing is, at college, Buffy’s more in the noticing place. She doesn’t have Tragic Angel Angst for a distraction. She sees Willow’s absences. She asks questions about why Willow’s taking Psych as her science requirement, and how well she knows Riley. She notices how Willow and Oz aren’t as close any more, and Willow in extremis ends up suggesting some kind of gay crisis, instead of saying she’s drawing away from here werewolf lover because she’s scared he could end up on a slab at her workplace.
Buffy’s very understanding, in a ‘I totally get human sexuality lies on a spectrum, but I am so far over the straight end I could just choke on it’ way. Willow finds herself with that kind of thought more and more often nowadays. That Buffy’s not all that. That maybe Willow has more important friends now.
That’s really when she notices how she’s been seduced. Because really, isn’t this all about Buffy? Isn’t Buffy a better, more efficient slayer of demons than the whole of the Initiative so far?
Yes. Yes she is. And Willow really tries to remember that. It clears her head. A lot. But Willow also tries to work out how to fix it. Because it really shouldn’t just be Buffy any more.
Also, the thing about being seduced? Not just a figure of speech. Willow may or may not be enjoying spending a whole lot of naked time with wholesome Riley Finn. And that may or may not be distracting her from Buffy. And from Oz (who leaves, which is kind of helpful because he never really stopped asking the questions, just dialled it back till Willow could ignore them).
Oz leaves because of a freshly dead girl who is also a wolf, and Willow takes her corpse into the Initiative and has a little talk with Professor Walsh about what other kinds of demons are maybe out there, and how one might combat them. It goes a little something like this: you need someone that has a human individual’s ingenuity and memory; a few examples of animal/demons’ physical strength and special physical traits; a whole lot of computerised/robotic processing power. Plus a little nuclear reactor powered undead capability, and you’d really be there. That’s what would really help in the fight against the vampires and demons and forces of darkness. Not just one girl in all the world, but something new. And really? They wanted Willow originally for her brain, so...
Professor Walsh says, quietly, “I never thought Riley knew about 314.”
Willow says, “Well, no. But she knows quite a lot about computers. Also, she’s not real good about password security.” Because she’s Willow, you see, and Willow spends time thinking things through, and does research, and in general likes to ensure she is fully informed about major secret government organisations that are trying to seduce her. She adds, “But I think you have the right idea.” Maybe that’s a comfort to Professor Walsh.
The Professor is unwrapping a humanoid thing on the gurney, and it’s a weird Frankenstein creation, half-man, part computer, and lots of demonic whatchamajigs stuck on like bad make up, and this is not what Willow had in mind, even before he opens his eyes, and says, “Mother?” in a voice that doesn’t sound overly sentient or human to Willow.
Then Professor Walsh says something that’s so stupid Willow can hardly bear it. She says, “I have a prototype. But he needs work. And I’m not sure his brain is right for this. I need volunteers. Really committed people who-“ and she looks at Willow like she’s a delicious lunch, or a perfect hypothesis, and Willow - who does not want to become a Frankendroid in the hands of someone this lacking in vision - is forced to defend herself with what turns out to be the arm of a Polgara demon that was laying about ready for use, and now it seems like Willow’s a murderer.
But she’s still Willow. And she’s never been stupid. And now she’s sure she knows better than some people she used to have a lot of respect for. So she gets out of 314, taking quite a large part of the processor core for the prototype with her, and fetches Riley with a smile and a kiss and a, “C’m on honey, I want to go to the Bronze tonight.” And she leaves the Initiative compound for what is definitely going to be the last time.
*
And now Willow is here, at Giles’s apartment, with Riley and Buffy and Xander and Anya and - for some reason - Spike. She’s holding the Polgara arm, which also has a spike, and she’s possibly a little on the edge of hysteria. She’s also holding the ickily dripping processor core from the badly-made prototype of the demon warrior race. And she’s telling them that she’s a murderer. And a whole lot about what the Initiative looks like, and claims to be, and how at the heart of it there’s a really good idea in the hands of really not so great people who are looking for volunteers, and how Willow is not, no sir, about to volunteer for that.
“Except... I still think that maybe Buffy shouldn’t have to carry this all alone. And they are right, about it maybe being better to create an army to face the bad guys. And we are the only other operation out there. I know we don’t have any money or resources or anything like that yet. And, obviously, the Initiative is gonna be hunting me and maybe all of us when they know what happened to Professor Walsh and what I took.”
Willow feels like she’s maybe over-emphasised the downside of the situation, just a little, because her whole audience looks depressed. “But maybe, just maybe... if we can survive the Initiative, and the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness, and make some money, and keep this secret, and work out how to make it like little moderate body enhancements instead of big scary Frankenstein creature creation... maybe, we might be able to help save the world. Like, permanently?”
Willow also feels like she has talked maybe a little too much, and her audience doesn’t immediately respond to her. “Guys? What do you think? Do we have a plan?”
***