Butterfly Ops
By Alexandra Huxley
Rating: R
Disclaimers, etc. in chapter 43.

Chapter Forty-Four (A)

========================


Riley shifted, feeling the brush tickling his skin as
he woke up, more alert than he could remember being
in, well, since he’d been here. Angry, too.

No. Make that furious.

He opened his eyes, unsurprised to find her at the
side of his bed. Nor was he surprised that she didn’t
try to hide what she was busily doing, wielding the
brush along his skin. The markings now covered all of
both arms and from his waist to his chest.

“You’re not Sam.” Not in any way except shape and
form – and even those, he now realized, were suspect.

“Be quiet,” she said, tears falling as she worked.

Grabbing her hands roughly, he stopped her from
drawing anything else. When he sat up suddenly, he
didn’t care that the bowls and paints crashed to the
floor, or that she nearly toppled over after them.
She was tough, she could handle the fall. At the
moment, she was lucky that was all he was doing: every
cell in his body wanted to hurt her. Given the
intensity of his anger, he might even possibly be able
to do it, regardless of her pre-Slayer strength.

She’d taken him away from his kids, from Buffy. And
she’d used Sam to do it.

The worst part, though? There was a part of him that
just didn’t care. Despite knowing what she’d done –
despite his absolute knowledge that this wasn’t Sam –
he craved her. He ached for her touch. That was just
downright disturbing.

He made himself let go of her hands and reached past
her for his shirt, laid out neatly at the end of the
bed. “I guess I don’t need to tell you how I figured
it all out, right?” Forcing himself to ignore the
heat radiating from her skin, he pulled on his shirt.
“Because you saw it happen; you can see my dreams.”

Dreams, which, this time hadn’t been about the events
in his life or the people that populated it; instead
they were the pieces of a puzzle laid out in front of
him – all he had to do was put them together.

“That’s why you thought it was Sam I was dreaming
about this whole time.” Why she’d assumed it was Sam
in the bed, ‘warmed by the sun’; Sam under ‘Aurora’s
lights.’ “You didn’t know it was Buffy.”

That had made no sense at first – if she could see the
dreams, couldn’t she see the difference between Sam
and Buffy? Even to a blind person the two looked
nothing alike. That question had had him stumped for
a while.

Until he realized that wasn’t how dreams worked, no
matter how vivid they were – and these dreams were
most certainly that. They were tactile; touchable.
But that was the whole point: the richness was in the
sensations, the feelings – the intense rush of being
invaded through and through.

It was nearly impossible to pin anything down,
however; nearly impossible to actually envision
something no matter how desperate you were for the
image to appear. If anyone knew that, Riley did –
what he would have given to see Sam smile one last
time, even in a dream. The harder he tried, the more
elusive she was. He could never capture her, could
never quite connect the dots. Why would this be any
different?

If he couldn’t paint the picture, though, how could
this woman take on Sam’s appearance, right down to the
midnight blue tank top with the colorful stitching
along its hem? How could he wake up to her looking
like Sam if the dreams hadn’t even begun yet?

That, too, had an explanation: whatever power she was
harnessing had as much to do with him as it did with
her. The last thing he’d heard was Sam’s voice – when
he woke up, she was what he wanted to see, what he had
expected. Thinking back on Joe’s whole ‘true love’
thing, was it really any surprise that she appeared to
Riley the way he remembered her from that day in
Okinawa? The day his love for her transformed into
something he hadn’t known was possible, hadn’t even
felt with Buffy.

Not until recently at least. Very recently. Thus the
fury. He’d been happy, truly happy – for the first
time in almost nine years. Nine fucking years.

That craving thing he’d just been thinking about?
Scratch that.

Riley stood up angrily and walked across the room,
keeping his back to her. He needed to be away, needed
to be out of arm’s reach. He’d never wanted to lash
out so much as he did at this very moment – not even
with Spike, and that was saying something. He wanted
to make her suffer, wanted to make her understand what
it was like to have your breath taken away – stolen
away – just when you were finally figuring out how to
get the air back in.

She had done this to him – had made him think she was
Sam, had made him want her so much that he could hear
Sam’s voice, that he could taste the lip gloss she
wore. Even worse than that – she’d played off the
guilt he’d felt since that first kiss with Buffy;
she’d made him think that he’d betrayed Sam – betrayed
Sam by dreaming about Buffy. No – not just dreaming
about Buffy – feeling her; feeling every inch of her,
feeling her open her heart up and drink him in.

Feeling the knife slice through his gut when he’d
woken up after that incredible night – woken up and
seen that sunrise. He’d actually laughed, thinking,
Now? Now you’re coming? Now, after he’d gotten five,
maybe six whole hours of knowing what it felt like to
be loved by Buffy – truly, wholeheartedly loved by
Buffy in a way he hadn’t even imagined possible all
those years ago?

He could hear the woman behind him push the chair
aside as she knelt to the floor.

Why couldn’t she have felt that? Why hadn’t he
dreamed it – dreamed the awful moment of clarity in
which he’d realized that he might never touch Buffy
again, that he was about to lose her for the second
time in his life?

And that was just a drop in the bucket compared to the
thought of losing his kids – of never again watching
Annie drown her ice cream in hot fudge, or of never
again seeing Liam fly through the air on his
skateboard. Of never again seeing them smile. Of
them never smiling again.

No, he thought, turning back to face the bed – to face
the woman who looked so much like Sam that he almost
couldn’t bear it now that he knew who she truly was.
“Are my kids alive? My parents?”

This had to be an alternate dimension of some type.
He understood enough about such things to know that
time passed strangely in them, that a minute could be
a year – or ten. That in the literal blink of his eye
Kate could age into a full-blown Sam; Jack could
become an old man and die.

Riley couldn’t even let those thoughts stay in his
head as he waited for her answer. He had to move on
to something less painful, albeit only slightly. “Is
Buffy?”

For Buffy it might not even take a full-fledged blink;
she was living on borrowed time already. Did she even
make it through the storm? She obviously wasn’t here.
She was stronger than he was; if she were here, he
would have seen her by now. Had that been it? Was
she gone?

No. She’d been on that bluff fighting those men.
That meant she was fine – or at least had been when
the fight happened. Which, of course, brought him
back to the question, “How long have I been here?”

The woman didn’t respond, her attention instead being
very deliberately focused on the brushes and bowls he
had knocked over.

Fine. He’d figure it out himself.

He felt like it was a lifetime; which, in a sense, it
was, seeing as he’d relived every moment of his kids’
lives – plus a good deal of his relationship with Sam
– since he’d been here.

Except, for some reason, the bad parts – the ones
without a silver lining. Like the whole thing about
Sam dying, followed by him almost destroying himself
with grief. He wasn’t sure why he’d been spared that;
for that, at least, he was grateful.

However, despite reliving the last – what? sixteen? –
years of his life, it felt like almost no time had
passed. By his calculation, he’d only been fully
conscious for an hour, maybe two. He wasn’t hungry
anymore; there was no need for another chamber pot.
Hell, he didn’t even need to shave.

So, great – he’d narrowed the time frame down to
somewhere between an hour and sixteen years.
Wonderful.

Other things were a bit easier, like how she’d managed
to get Sam’s voice down so perfectly: magic. A love
spell? One of truth? Some weird combination that
played off of his memories? It didn’t really matter
how she’d done it, just that she’d pulled off the
illusion, yanked the rabbit out of a hat that had been
empty only moments before.

She’d set up the scenario he so desperately wanted to
believe, manipulating him enough that he’d even done
some of the work for her, trying to convince himself
that some part of this was real, that Sam was somehow
really here – touching him, tasting him.

This wasn’t just magic for magic’s sake, though –
there was a purpose to it. The dreams had been
crafted by her; he’d been guided to them, his mind a
maze of corridors locked up tight until she provided
the key. The power of suggestion to the nth degree.

‘Tell me about our children.’ Children she knew
existed because it had been the first thing he’d said
when he’d initially woken up. Children whose names
she hadn’t even known until his memories had provided
the words.

Riley fought the urge to cross back to where she knelt
and grab her by the shoulders – shake her until she
answered his questions. “You read my dreams, didn’t
you?”

He sat down at the table, a safe distance away. It
wasn’t as though he actually needed a response; he
knew he was right. He was even confident enough to
take it a step further. “You needed the kisses to do
it. The connection.”

The kisses were like a drug – lulling him into some
alternate state of consciousness. Or at least he
thought so. Maybe it was the way she controlled it,
pushing his dreams along the path she wanted to
follow. Sometimes it got away from her, though, her
spell so strong that even just the way she’d been
sitting on the bed was enough to bring him back to
that night after Sunnydale; enough to flash forward to
the hospital in Japan.

A pretty powerful combination: the power to read the
dreams, the power to induce them.

Not all the power, however. He’d managed to make it
at least a little difficult – getting out of the bed,
finding his clothes... That had gotten to her, as had
the time when he’d woken up first, finding her asleep
in his arms – the time she’d sat up quickly, bringing
on the whole Sunnydale/Okinawa flashback. She’d been
as caught off guard as he was. More so, perhaps,
since she was used to being in control. Good. That
made him happy.

So did the part about where he’d been dreaming about
Buffy – and not for the obvious reasons. Reasons that
he actually didn’t want to think about at the moment
because just the thought of those nights with Buffy
was in itself enough to make his heart start racing.
He was having a hard enough time controlling that at
the moment. Thinking about Buffy was certainly not
going to help that. Thinking about screwing up the
Princess’ plans on the other hand...

Riley was fairly certain that hadn’t been at all what
the Princess intended when she’d hovered above his
body, giving him the direction: ‘I have somewhere I
need to take you.’

No way she could have known that Buffy had said almost
that exact same thing in very similar – albeit more
naked – circumstances.

Had she had any clue that he’d been dreaming about
someone other than Sam? That there was someone other
than his wife, the woman she was imitating? Maybe she
still didn’t know. How could she? He didn’t think
she’d been watching him; and outward appearances, i.e.
his wedding ring – which seemed to have disappeared
for the moment – indicated that there was still only
one woman in his life. The one who had died years
ago.

“Where is it by the way?” He stretched his legs out
in front of him, and rested his elbow on the table.
Maybe if he acted relaxed, he might actually fool
himself into thinking he was, might actually be able
to ignore the signals his body was sending. “My
wedding ring? Kate will kill me if I don’t bring it
back.”

He almost fell out of the chair when not-Sam actually
answered him. “What ring?”

What ring? Was she delusional? There were only two
people here as far as he could tell, and one of them
had been unconscious for the majority of the time. He
straightened up; so much for pretending to be relaxed.
“The one I was wearing when you brought me here.”

She looked puzzled – genuinely so. Laughing almost,
at the ridiculousness of what he’d just said. “You
came to me. How would I call you here?”

Her hands were covered with the paint that had spilled
and she wiped them on her pants. Midnight blue, by
the way, just like the tank top. With the same
colorful stitches along the hems that graced her
ankles.

Was he actually looking at her legs? Was he really
that crazy? If reminding himself of this woman’s real
identity wasn’t enough, then think about Buffy. She
might forgive him for kissing Sam, 'might' being the
incredibly iffy operative word – but for thinking the
kinds of thoughts that were creeping into his mind?
About a woman he knew wasn’t his wife? Buffy would
kill him. And that was the best-case scenario.

You’re not some sex-starved teenager. Look away, Ri.
Just look away.

Besides he wouldn’t be surprised if this was all part
of the deal, another trick up her sleeve. This kind
of need just wasn’t natural. He’d felt it only once
before – in a poltergeist-infested frat house. It was
pretty clear she could mess with his head; messing
with his body wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
Unfortunately, realizing that didn’t seem to do a damn
bit of good. He still wanted her. Intensely.

Push it aside. This is no different than dealing with
pain. Mind over matter. Just keep working it out.
She gave you the tools. Use them...

Use the words from before that last kiss, the words
that got you this far: ‘This time, think about me.’

Which he did. Think about, or, rather, dream about
how it was that she was so much like Sam and yet not
at all like his wife. Think about how she hadn’t
known about Faith, how she’d mistakenly thought it had
been her under the Northern Lights. And, more
importantly, think about how it was that she’d jumped
up, startled when he had the dreams about Buffy.

That had been another point in his column, the point
where he may actually have gotten the upper hand,
although completely unbeknownst to him at the time.
He’d attributed her reaction to him talking in his
sleep, to his saying Buffy’s name instead of Sam’s.

His attention was drawn back to her as she stood up,
and he shifted, again trying to disregard the way his
body was reacting; again telling himself that this
wasn’t Sam, no matter how strong the resemblance. For
some reason, that message didn’t seem to be getting
through.

You just think you feel her here, see her. It’s part
of the illusion. Don’t let her fool you. She can be
fooled, too. Remind her of that.

“You messed up,” he said. “You didn’t realize there
were two different women.”

She appeared to lose interest in cleaning up the mess,
kicking at and scattering various pieces of pottery as
she spoke. “Buffy’s a stupid thing to call someone.”
She glared at him. “I thought it was just her special
sex name.”

“Her...what?” Riley asked weakly. He wasn’t sure why
his skin insisted on blushing. This woman now knew
him more intimately than either Buffy or Sam – she’d
actually been in his head, thinking his thoughts; in
his body, feeling what he’d felt. All of which was
incredibly unsettling. Yet he still could only
mumble, “So I did say Buffy’s name.”

The woman...

No – the Princess. The warrior princess who is not
only stronger than you, but is also still quite
dangerous given this odd power she has over you. The
Princess came over to the table and he watched warily
as she sat down with a thump.

Warily for a good reason as it turned out, because she
surprised him by letting a shy smile come over her
face; she started to blush. Neither of those things
did anything to diminish the wicked, playful look in
her eye as she said, “Moaned it, in fact. Several
times.”

Yes. That was almost pure Buffy.

Don’t grin, don’t smile. Don’t respond to the
huskiness in her voice. Don’t think about how that’s
Buffy’s twinkle in her eye, Buffy’s smile on her face.

Don’t even entertain the thought. Don’t give her the
satisfaction. Upper hand – remember?

He turned a bit, so that there was no chance his legs
would come in contact with hers under the table –
actual physical contact might just break the camel’s
back. There was far too much to lose to even take
that risk. Just keep putting the pieces together.
Figure it out, what it was that had bothered her so
much.

Think about how she’d fled the room, so unsettled when
he woke up, mumbling... What was it – ‘who’?

No – ‘how.’ She’d asked ‘how.’ It wasn’t who he’d
been dreaming, it was what he’d been dreaming about.
The light bulb almost blinded him as it went off in
his head. “You saw the fight, didn’t you?”

Yes. The answer was clear even though she didn’t
actually say it. The way she sat back in her chair
with her arms folded across her chest was good enough
for Riley. And of course – being an earlier version
of a Slayer, she would have recognized Buffy’s power.


The rush of heat he felt was not at all welcome.
Still, he found himself smiling. “You saw how good
she is. Made you nervous, didn’t it?” Well, alright.
Score one for Buffy.

That seemed to annoy her – her eyes flashed and for
the first time he saw the true Princess. Just for an
instant as her anger flared. She practically hissed,
“I already knew she was strong.”

“Already knew...?” How would she know Buffy was
strong? From his memories of the sparring sessions in
Boston during training? It had to be. He didn’t
remember dreaming about Sunnydale. The Princess
hadn’t taken him that far back. There was a hint of
completely unearned pride in his voice when he said,
“That wasn’t even Buffy at her-”

“Buffy?” The Princess jumped on his words, her face
registering surprise. “That one was Buffy?”

She looked down at her hands, turning them back to
front as though the movement would give her the answer
she sought. What the question was, Riley had no idea.

“Yes,” he said, trying to figure out why that was so
disconcerting for her. “That was Buffy.”

She actually seemed almost as unsettled as she had
when he’d dreamed the dream in the first place.
Because he had fought, too? Because he’d...?

Riley leaned forward. “That was your knife – the one
I threw to Buffy. You gave it to me.”

She wouldn’t look at him, just drew her hands back and
pulled herself inward as a tear rolled down her cheek
and she shook her head. Her unexpected little girl
vulnerability encased in Sam’s skin reminded him so
much of Kate that he wanted to just take her into his
arms and hold her until she could see the light shine
again.

Stop it. This isn’t Kate needing everything to be
made better. She’s making you think that there’s
warmth under that steel. She’s ramping up the emotion
because the physical isn’t getting it done.

Except that it kind of was seeing that Riley’s hand
was moving across the table, flying completely under
the radar of his brain. He stopped himself only
inches from her skin.

She looked down at his hand suspiciously and then back
up, somehow sending Sam’s voice into his head without
speaking a word: “Don’t do this, Finn. Don’t let me
feel you. I’m not sure I can die all over again. I’m
not sure I can let you leave.”

That stopped him in his tracks and he pulled his hand
back as he looked across the table. How did she do
that? How could his barriers be so easily broken?
How could she still be Sam when he knew this was the
Princess? And why on earth would she even bring up
the subject of him leaving? Unless...

Riley drummed his fingers on the table, thinking that
if he kept his hands occupied, they’d stay on this
side of the table. “You’re stuck here, too.” It
wasn’t that she’d seen the fight, it wasn’t that Buffy
had scared her. She had actually been helping – maybe
even hoping he’d escape, hoping he could somehow take
her with him.

He looked around the room, its blackness tempered only
by a faint, tantalizing hint of dawn and the
flickering shadows on the wall; her prison of
‘darkness and flame’ as the legend put it. “Those men
on the bluff – they keep you here.”

Her nod, though almost imperceptible, was there. Her
arms went around her chest as she hugged herself. She
actually looked frightened – of him – as she
whispered, “How did you go there?”

“No fucking idea,” unfortunately. No fucking idea.
He smiled grimly.

Damn it. She was getting under his skin, making him
actually want to like her.

It’s called Stockholm Syndrome, idiot. Identifying
with your captor. Don’t forget she holds your life in
her hands, that everything you have left to live for
is slowly slipping through her fingers. Don’t forget
that fourteen men are already past the point of no
return. Fourteen men who never even stood a chance.

They’d never been exposed to the things Riley had
seen; weren’t even aware such things existed. They
had no knowledge of the men who had come before, no
knowledge of the Princess and her Trader. They’d
probably woken up to see their wives staring back at
them and hadn’t even questioned it; would have skipped
right past ‘impossible’ and moved straight on to
‘Heaven.’ Why would they question a kiss that sent
them reeling?

Hell, even Riley had almost stopped right there. He’d
wanted so much for this to be true that he’d even
imagined he could feel Sam’s presence, could feel her
watching his back like she’d done so many times
before. He’d thought he heard her speaking to him for
God’s sake – only minutes ago, when he was way beyond
believing that she was here.

That was actually an improvement, though, as opposed
to the other times he’d woken up and heard her voice
despite being the only person in the room, heard her
voice ringing in his ears.

No. That’s what he’d tried to convince himself of –
that he’d heard her voice. That it wasn’t just him
thinking her into his head as had happened almost
every single day since she’d died.

He should have known better. Unlike the others, he
had no excuse.

The others, Ri. The fourteen others. Fourteen other
men who left families behind. Countless other lives
that had been irrevocably changed. How about them?
How about doing the job you were hired to do? And if
you’re too damn weak to resist whatever she’s doing –
too weak to get past the curve of Sam’s mouth, or the
lock of hair that’s falling to her cheek – then pick
your ass up off this chair and walk away. Walk at
least far enough away that you can’t smell the jasmine
in her hair.

Good. Glad to see you could manage that much. Could
we maybe try and capitalize?

He turned to her and lifted his arm. Pulled back the
sleeve to show her that he’d figured out the drawings,
the ones she put there, painting as he’d slept.
Symbols that – as he could still picture Willow
pointing out on that huge video screen – were
sometimes repeated, but appeared in patterns unique to
each body, individual letters forming different words.
“I’m here, too, aren’t I? My life is here, what you
see in my dreams. And when you’re done-”

“This is all your fault, you know,” she snapped.

“My fault?” Riley asked incredulously, watching as she
leapt to her feet and came towards him. He took a
step back. “How exactly?”

All traces of tears were gone, and there was an odd
juxtaposition of Buffy’s fire flashing in Sam’s eyes
as she said, “You’re the one who’s different. You’re
the one who fooled me.”

“I...?” Excuse me? She was actually angry at him?
“Are you kidding?”

She was only inches away from him now, backing him up
into the wall, jabbing his chest as she spoke and
using just a little too much force as she did so.
“You look like him. You’re strong like-”

“Ouch,” he muttered, grabbing her hand as his back hit
the wall.

And there it was. The water roaring through the
floodgates. He had to close his eyes; couldn’t look
at her face – Sam’s face. Not when his wrist fell
alongside the curve of her breast, not when she was
clutching his hand. Not when his breath caught and he
could hear her quietly sigh – whimper almost – as her
lips brushed his chest.



TBC in Chapter 44B








=====
Writing as Alexandra Huxley
http://home.mindspring.com/~jenkel/fanfic/index.html

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