New Paths

Buffy sighs quietly and leans back against Tara as they watch the two redheads disappear from sight as they make their way to the concourse and their flight out. “They know to call us between their connecting flights in Atlanta, right?”



“Yes, honey.” Tara smiles softly, hugging Buffy firmly to her. “After they leave Sunnydale, everyone with any powers or oddities will be gone but you and I, so you don’t have to worry about evil, mad scientists capturing everyone else.”



“You sure I can’t…” Buffy snaps her mouth shut as she hears the low growl coming from Tara. “Okay, okay. I had to try.”



“Anyway, if you tried to get me to go where I think you would send me, all hell would probably end up breaking loose there.” Tara warns, narrowing her eyes on her lover as they make their way to the Starbucks to order a couple of Mocha’s to make sure Oz and Willow’s plane takes off on time.



“Trust me, there is no way in hell I would send you anywhere near LA.” Buffy shakes her head. “I may not be the brightest person, but I know that would just be asking for trouble.” Buffy works on drinking her Mocha as Tara smirks at her.



“So where were you planning on sending me, if I had decided to leave?” Tara quirks an eyebrow at her lover, curious as to what she had planned.



“I was going to have you and mom take a drive down the coast, maybe head towards Mexico or somewhere until things are taken care of.” Buffy picks at the napkin.



“What are we going to do?” Tara smiles sadly at as Buffy sighs heavily and shrugs her shoulders in answer.



“Spend this weekend making out like bunnies, take the last of the finals next week then move in with mom for the summer. Hopefully figure out what to do about the Initiative eventually.” Buffy offers, reaching out to thread her fingers with Tara’s hand.



“Bunnies???” Tara grins crookedly at her lover.



“Uh, huh.” Buffy wiggles her eyebrows. “All weekend long, just taking enough time out for food and showers occasionally.”



“What about sleep?” Tara laughs as Buffy seems to debate for a few minutes. “You’re rotten, but I love you anyway.”



Buffy smirks and pulls Tara’s hand up to her mouth to nibble gently on her thumb. “You’re going to see how rotten I am when we get back to the dorm.” Buffy growls softly before nipping a little firmer on Tara’s thumb, chuckling as Tara groans. Glancing up at the departure board, she looks for Willow and Oz’s plane. “They’re off.”



“Then let’s go.” Tara tugs on Buffy’s hand, chuckling as the slayer practically drags her behind her.



***



“Sleep, I’m going to run out and get breakfast at the diner.” Buffy murmurs quietly to Tara as her lover sleepily protests as she slides out of the bed, grinning at the arm wrapped around her waist trying to pull her back into bed.



“Food?” Tara drags an eye open, spinning it around until it focuses and looks at the clock before it drops closed again. “We just fell asleep two hours ago.”



“That’s why I want you to go back to sleep. I’ll be back in an hour with a huge stack of pancakes, sunny-side up eggs, biscuits and all kinds of other goodies to replenish our strength with.” Buffy presses a gentle kiss to Tara’s kiss-swollen lips, chuckling at the sight of her lover. They had been making love off and on for roughly eighteen hours after seeing Willow and Oz off. Now it’s Saturday morning and her stomach couldn’t be ignored any longer.



“Be careful…” Tara mumbles as she lets Buffy escape her grip as she buries her face in the pillow already asleep.



“I will.” Buffy answers, even though she knows Tara’s already asleep again. Gently kissing the top of her lover’s head, Buffy debates for a moment, realizing she is going to need to take a shower and clean up. There’s no way that people wouldn’t realize what she’s been doing if she doesn’t, knowing just from the way Tara looks that she looks just as bad. Chuckling at the thought before she yanks on her robe and grabs the shower kit, planning on hurrying through her shower and coming back to grab breakfast.



***



Striding up the stairs to start the knock-out gas, Riley snarls as he remembers listening to the two women outside the room. After he was sure they had fallen asleep, he checked the rest of the dormitory, surprised at the quietness of the dorm, but realizing a lot of the kids had been out late the night before partying as most of them had already finished with their finals. Pushing the door open to the roof his lips curl into an evil smile as he thinks about capturing the two women, planning on doing his own experiments. “Let’s see how well you like her once her pretty face is all disfigured and scarred, Buffy. And watching me the whole time and not being able to do a damn thing to stop me.” A wicked, evil laugh escapes Riley as his regular eye shows madness and his red artificial eye gleams brightly.



***



Maggie looks at the report, frowning as she sees the discrepancies in some of the supplies. Tapping her fingers on the desk, she spins around in her chair and brings up the different cameras throughout the Initiative. Able to account for everyone but two, she exhales loudly as she realizes one of them is Riley. Checking her records, she realizes Davidson had left on leave the day before and that explained the other soldier as she punches in the passwords to connect her to Riley. Frowning heavily as she just sees what should be the inside of his room, she starts typing frantically, running a diagnostic test on the program before shifting to the other monitors, double-checking Riley’s room. Having become increasingly worried about Riley’s mental stability as he seemed to be becoming more and more violent when he was out on patrol in search of hostiles, but not noticing anything else, she’d pushed the worry to the background.



A few minutes later when she hears a beeping noise from the diagnostic program, she spins around and pulls up the results. “SHIT!” She screams, slamming her hand down as it shows that in the past month there had been some discrepancies. Pulling up the different discrepancies, she puts four on one computer, watching as the videos play. Something not seeming right, she watches them through three times before stopping the first one and letting other ones play for different amounts of time before pausing them. Finally playing them all at the same time, she watches intently for fifteen minutes. “You bastard.” She snarls, spinning around and slamming the emergency button before striding out of the room towards the meeting room.



***



Giving the gas enough time to work throughout the dormitory, Riley pulls the gas mask down over his face and makes his way down the stairs and towards Tara’s dorm room. Forcing the door open, he steps inside noticing that only Tara’s in the bed. “Where’s Buffy?” He looks around before snatching the woman and roughly tossing her limp body over his shoulder before heading towards the bathrooms, checking them. Becoming angrier and angrier as he doesn’t find the blonde slayer anywhere in the dormitory, knowing she won’t be in any of the other rooms. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he darts to the stairs that will take him down to the basement, through the tunnel system and to the building he’d set up to keep the two women in, his eyes darting angrily as he tosses Tara naked onto the mattress on the floor. Giving her body a cursory glance, feeling nothing but anger and hatred for the woman, he gags and ties her so she can’t get loose or perform any spells before striding out of the room, locking the door before striding angrily away.



***



Buffy sips on her mocha as she makes her way back to the dorm, knowing her lover will still be asleep. Planning on waking Tara by starting at her delectable toes and working her way up the Wiccan’s body, Buffy frowns as she notices a small gathering of people outside their dorm. Starting to jog she looks at the college security people keeping people from entering the dorm and firemen starting to exit the building.



“We’re sorry, it seems that was some kind of gas leak or something and we can’t let anyone in until we find out what caused the students to be knocked out.”



Buffy growls as she hears more emergency vehicles arriving. “I live here, my girlfriend was in one of the rooms…” Buffy starts to push her way through the group, dropping her food as she darts up the steps.



“You can’t go in there, miss. We’re not sure that the gas has been completely dispelled yet.” The guard blocks Buffy’s way.



“Damn it! I need to make sure she’s okay.” Buffy snarls starting to push her way past them, her gut rolling uncontrollably as she has a very, very bad feeling.



“The firemen are going from room to room bringing all the students out as quickly as they can. Please let them do their job.” He blocks her from going in, frowning at the small woman. “You’ll just get in the way, or possibly end up knocked out yourself if you go in there.”



“Bastard.” Buffy spits out the word angrily as she darts down the stairs, planning on hitting the sewers and coming up into the building through the basement, knowing the sewer systems like the back of her hand from being down there so often.



Glancing around quickly, Buffy pulls off the manhole cover and climbs down, pulling the cover back in place before working her way quickly to the sewer entrance to her and Tara’s dorm. Dodging to keep from being detected, she hurries up the stairs and slides to a halt, her heart starting to pound uncontrollably in her chest as she sees the broken lock to their dorm room. “No, no, no. This is not happening.” Buffy whispers, before she gently pushes open the door, hesitating as she’s almost afraid to look in the room. Finally looking at the bed, she whimpers as its empty, everything else exactly how she’d left it earlier. Spinning around her eyes unconsciously look from one door to another, noticing all of them are intact. “You fucking bastards.” Buffy snarls angrily before flying down the stairs past a set of firemen coming up them, not caring if they see her now.



Pushing her way through the crowd, she runs for the nearest payphone, dropping the change in quickly and punching the number to the Magic Box almost viciously. As Giles answers, she yells into the phone. “They took her! They used some kind of gas to knock everyone in the dormitory out. I’m going after them and I’m going to rip them all new assholes!” Buffy slams the phone down before striding towards Howell House and one of the entrances to the Initiative. Her anger flowing through her, making her whole body vibrate as she rips the door off the Initiative’s quarters.



***



“Dear Lord…” Giles looks at the phone before darting his eyes around the shop. Hurrying towards the front door, he flips the sign to closed and locks the door before jogging back to the phone. Hesitating for a moment, he calls Joyce first, not knowing if Buffy had thought to call her mom, or just him.



“Joyce, this is Rupert. Buffy just called, from the brief message she gave me, it appears that Tara was taken and some kind of knockout gas was used.” Giles hurriedly tells the slayer’s mother what he knows.



“Oh, no…” Joyce whimpers and raises a hand to her head, the watcher’s phone call catching her as she was just getting ready to head to the Art Gallery. “Where is she?”



“Buffy’s going after the Initiative. I’m going to call the Council and get them to send anyone and everyone they can to come here to help, then I plan on calling Angel and seeing if he and his group can get here.” Giles admits, rubbing a hand over his forehead roughly.



“Hold on, my call waiting is beeping.” Joyce bites her lip as she presses the button to switch lines. “Hello?”



“Joyce, this is Angel. Cordy just had a vision that Tara was taken by this human/machine/demon creature.” Angel hates calling about anything to do with the witch, but if the PTB had sent the vision to Cordy, he knows he can’t ignore it.



“Oh, my God. She just saw Riley, no other soldiers around him?” Joyce hoarsely questions.



“Riley isn’t a hybrid…” Angel blinks in confusion, the last time he’d come to Sunnydale when Buffy and the soldier were dating, the man was human.



“Riley is the hybrid, Angel.” Joyce fights the tears coming to her eyes.



“Was there anyone else in your vision besides Tara and the hybrid?” Angel looks at Cordy who’s holding an ice pack to her aching head.



“No.” Cordelia answers softly, closing her eyes.



“Just Riley.” Angel finally offers to Joyce. “I’m gathering everyone here that I can trust, if you’re possibly going after the Initiative, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”



“Thank you, I’ll let Rupert know. Come here when you get into town.” Joyce flips back to Rupert and doesn’t bother fighting the tears any longer as they flow down her cheeks. “That was Angel, Cordelia had a vision that Tara was taken by Riley. From what she saw there were no other soldiers around, but I somehow don’t think that means a hell of a lot.”



“I dare say it won’t. Buffy’s already heading toward the Initiative’s headquarters. Just stay put and after I finish with my calls, I’ll make sure everyone has your number to use. We’ll make your house the meeting spot.” Giles pulls out his phone book, flipping towards some of his contacts that he can call in favors.



“I’ll be here.” Joyce whispers into the phone before disconnecting and holding it against her chest, staring down at her arm and the leather bracelet that’s eerily silent, knowing if Tara could, she would have set off her beacon to let everyone know she was in danger and where she’s at. Remembering Tara joking as she gave them to everyone that it would make a loud and obnoxious whistle before cutting off within a few seconds. The small stones in a circle on the bracelet would light individually in whichever direction that they needed to go to whoever had set off their bracelet.



Taking a deep breath, Joyce tries to calm her racing heart as she reaches up to wipe the tears from her face, deciding she’d better call into work and let her employees know that she won’t be in today.