ANIMALISTIC
By
Cynamin
DISCLAIMER: Okay, obviously anything you recognize,
I don't own. Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and all related characters,
etc. doesn't belong to me.
AUTHOR'S
NOTES:
This is for the BA_Fluff “101 Ways to Kill Riley” challenge based on the
list by Annie. I don’t remember who suggested the challenge.
This story uses #36 and #98 with a slight variation.
SPOILERS: Uh, there’s a brief
reference to “I Will Remember You.” No wait, I guess after “Doomed”
works best.
FEEDBACK: Any comments are not only
welcome, but begged for.
“This is all your fault!” Buffy yelled at the top of her
lungs, looking at the small white mouse on the floor of her dorm room.
Willow looked
flustered. “Buffy, I…”
“I mean, I can see it
now. ‘Sorry, Professor Walsh, but Riley won’t be coming in today
because my roommate turned him into a mouse!”
“Well, if you hadn’t
been complaining about how none of your boyfriends are honest with you,
maybe I could have completed the truth spell without messing up!”
Riley-mouse squeaked
and started wandering. Buffy scooped him up and sighed. “What
are we going to do with him?”
“I’ll find someway to
turn him back. Maybe Tara will help me,” Willow said.
“Meanwhile, put him in the cage with Amy.”
Change him back? Change me back! ‘Cause you’re so
good with reversal spells, aren’t you Willow? So, you’ve messed up
another and I get a new roommate. This is so unfair.
“This is all your fault!” Cordelia yelled as soon as the door
opened.
“Cordelia?” Buffy
asked in shock. The aspiring actress was standing in the hall outside
her dorm room, a large black cat squirming to get out of her arms.
“Stop it!” she yelled
at the cat, then replied, “Yeah, it’s me. Who else did you think it
was? Your roommate’s been messing with magic again, and now she has
to fix it!”
Willow was sitting by
Amy’s – and Riley’s – cage looking over her magic book to see where the
spell had gone wrong. “I’m trying to fix it!” she whined.
“Fine!” Cordelia
suddenly yelled – at the still squirming cat, not at Willow. “You
hold him,” she said, shoving the cat into Buffy’s arms and pushing her way
into the room. “He’s only happy with you anyway.” She paused
for a moment. “Which is a bad thing, so watch it.”
The cat fell still the
moment he was in Buffy’s arms. “You do realize that you make
absolutely no sense,” Buffy said as she tried to get the cat into a
comfortable position to hold him. The cat trembled slightly and let
out a quite pitiful meow. “I think you traumatized the poor thing.”
Cordelia just rolled
her eyes and turned her attention to Willow. “Fix him!”
“I said I’m…” Willow
looked at Cordelia oddly. “What are you doing here? How did you
know about Riley, anyway?”
Cordelia looked at the
white mouse in amusement. “That’s Riley?” She laughed.
Willow looked back and
forth between the mouse, Cordelia, and the cat. “Cordy? Who…?”
Buffy, however, found
her answer in the cat’s amber eyes. “Angel?!”
No, that’s my cheese! Get your own!
“You know, this is all your fault,” Giles said seriously once
Willow let him into the room.
“Why does everyone
keep saying that?” Willow cried.
“Because it is,”
Cordelia answered.
Buffy nodded from
where she sat on the bed, Angel curled up in her lap. “Yeah. I
mean, am I going to keep finding boyfriends turned into animals? This
is ridiculous!” She absently stroked Angel’s fur while she spoke.
“And I told you not to
cast spells when you weren’t focused,” Giles added.
“Well, lesson
learned,” Willow said sheepishly. “Could you please help me
fix this?”
Cordelia nodded.
“Yeah. I want my boss back.”
Giles walked back into
the hall for a moment and returned with an armload of books. “I
brought everything I thought could be of use,” he explained. He put
down the books in the middle of the floor.
Suddenly Buffy
chuckled for no apparent reason. Everyone looked at her, including
Angel who lifted his head from her lap for a moment. Buffy returned
his gaze and said with a laugh, “You were purring.” The two of them
then noticed everyone’s strange glance. “Well, he was!” Buffy
defended herself. Angel shrugged – as best a cat could – stretched,
and jumped down to the floor and Giles’ pile of books. He looked at
the ex-Watcher expectantly.
“Right. So, um,
research.”
Research. Why didn’t they ever do research like this
when I got turned into a rat? Hey! Go away, it’s my turn
on the wheel!
Angel had given up trying to be much help on the research
end. After finding that he couldn’t turn the pages with paws – at least,
not without great difficulty – he curled up on the floor next to Buffy and
tried to read the books she was looking at.
“There’s one thing I
don’t get,” Willow said at one point, looking at Angel’s still human
mannerisms and expressive cat noises. “I mean, how come Angel still
has his personality and Riley’s just a mouse?”
“Maybe because Riley
had no personality to begin with,” Cordelia muttered.
Angel chuckled…sort
of.
Why couldn’t you be a handsome, human intelligence, rat?
Why’d you have to be a mouse?
“Guys, I think I’ve found something that might work,” Willow
said finally, “but…”
“But what?” Cordelia
demanded. “I don’t have to go looking for a new job, do I?”
“Umm, actually…Buffy,
I need you to look at this.”
Buffy took the old
spell book from Willow’s hand. She looked at the open page for a
moment and blinked at the words. “Love Transformed?” she asked,
making sure that she was reading the correct spell.
Willow nodded.
“Yeah. Um, you see the part where it says ‘true love’s true form’?”
“Oh,” was all Buffy
said, very softly.
“That’s the part that
worries me,” Willow explained. “I mean, what about Riley?”
Buffy looked
stricken. “Aren’t you making an awfully big assumption there, Wills?”
Everyone stared at
her. Cordelia rolled her eyes. Angel looked hurt and let out a
very soft meow.
Buffy sighed.
“You’re right. What about Riley?”
Willow took the spell
book back. “I think…That is, Giles and I could try and modify this
spell so that it works for two people that you care about. It’s worth
a try.”
Buffy nodded.
“Then do it.”
Fifteen minutes later
Willow and Giles thought they had a workable spell. The center of the
room was a circle of candles, Buffy in the center, Angel to one side of
her. The only hitch came when Willow went to place Riley-mouse in the
circle as well. As she went to put him down on Buffy’s other side,
Angel hissed and swiped at him. Buffy put a restraining hand on his
back, and Willow scooped up the mouse before he could hide.
“For your sake,” Buffy
muttered to Angel, “I’m going to assume that was feline instincts getting
the better of you and not because he’s my boyfriend.”
Angel lowered his head
and watched the mouse closely.
“Willow,” Buffy said,
exasperated, “let’s just do this spell before anything else goes
wrong.”
“Right,” Willow
acknowledged. “Now Giles and I will be casting the spell, but the
results are going to depend on you. I need you to picture in your
mind Angel and Riley the way they’re supposed to be…”
Yes! I’ve got the cage all to myself again. Who
needs a roommate anyway? Now, if you could just find a reversal spell
that would work for me, things would be great…
“This is all your fault,” Angel muttered, sitting on Buffy’s
bed wrapped up in her blanket.
“I’m sorry I forgot to
bring clothes for you, okay? Giles went to find you something to wear
out of here,” Cordelia declared, extremely tired of this. “Smile
already. Everything else worked out great.”
That it had. While
clothes, embarrassingly enough, had apparently not been a part of Buffy’s
visualization process, sunlight had been. When the spell was complete
and Angel found himself in human form (all be it with vampire
strength because of all of the times he and Buffy had fought together)
Buffy admitted that she’d dreamed of him being human everyday since about a
week after she visited him in L.A. Telling her that the dreams had
really happened had been uncomfortable. Angel’s currently unclothed
state made things even more awkward. Buffy was quite purposefully
standing as far away from him as she could. Only the presence of
others in the room led to their self-control.
“What I don’t
understand,” Willow said after a moment, “is what happened to Riley?
Where’d he go?” She looked at Buffy. “Did you picture him
somewhere in particular, maybe?”
“To be honest,” Buffy
replied softly, “I was really concentrating more on Angel at the
time. I don’t know.”
Angel looked at Buffy
when she said that. She would not meet his eyes. Perhaps
the changes in the spell had done little, and it had been true love that
made the transformation possible.
“He’ll turn up,”
Cordelia said, her tone clearly indicating that she didn’t care one way or
another.
They might have
continued looking for Riley then, but the door opened
suddenly. Without any introduction, Xander began
rambling. “How are my two favorite girls? I come bearing
snacks, donuts, and – AAH!” Xander finally took in the whole situation.
He gaped at them. “What the hell are you doing here, Dead Boy? …And
where are your clothes?”
“Long story,” Cordelia
began, surprising Xander with her presence.
“A spell went bad,”
Willow said sheepishly.
“Apparently not that
long.”
Xander shook his head
in dismay. “Uh, okay. Well, if anyone wants donuts…” He
took a step forward and everyone heard a quite loud crunch.
“Uggh,” Cordelia said
in disgust. “Cockroach problem?”
“Never had one
before,” Buffy said, disinterested.
Willow, however, had
another idea. “Riley?”
Huh. Serves him right. Eat my food, will
you?
“This may have been all your fault,” Buffy said to Willow
softly, “but…thank you.”
“You’re not upset
about Riley?”
Buffy shrugged.
“Oddly, no. I’m just glad there’s no body or anything so I don’t have
to explain.”
“Well, there is a
body,” Willow said, “but it’s on the bottom of Xander’s shoe.”
Buffy laughed slightly
and stared across the room.
Willow smiled and
followed Buffy’s gaze to where Angel sat, staring out the open window at
the vibrant sunset. “True love’s true form, huh?”
Buffy smiled.
“Yeah.”
Angel turned to look
at them both. “What?”
“Your true form,
Angel. Not quite human, not vampire, just…Angel. Perfect,”
Buffy said softly.
“Perfect,” Angel replied
with a smile and stood up to move closer to Buffy. “Think we can make
this work this time?”
“Of course,” Buffy
replied, and they kissed as if there was no one else in the world.
Cordelia rolled her
eyes.
Willow smiled broadly.
Xander groaned and
looked away.
Giles shrugged and
began gathering his books.
And Riley…well, Riley
was dead.
So all was right with
the world.
Hey! What about me now?! I want to be human
too! …Darn it.
The End
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