SCRIBES OF ANGEL
FanFic
________________________________
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
Send me feedback and I'll
love you forever!