Archive of Our Own ^beta

Robby tucked his cellphone into his pocket and stared out at the last rays of sunlight fading over Pittsburgh. He could remember a time when he liked sunsets—the colors, the glinting promise of night. But that was a long time ago, back when he was young and naive, when he didn’t know what the night held.

“I’m not sure I can do this again,” Robby said, as Jack came up beside him and leaned against the rail.

“Yeah, but can you imagine letting anyone else do it? Someone Underwood sent, from the Council?”

Robby must have made an interesting face because Jack chuckled, low and a little dirty. “You’ll do it,” he said, with annoying certainty. “Because you’re the best hope she has.”

“Not just me,” said Robby, unclenching his fingers from the railing with a sigh.

“No,” agreed Jack, looking at him sidelong, sly. “And that’s because of you, too.”

He straightened up, meeting Robby’s eyes with a tilted chin, suddenly serious. “So how can I help?”

Robby brushed his hands off on the sides of his jeans. (“Unprofessional,” Underwood had sniffed, the last time the Council had come for an inspection.) “Can you do that spell again, the one to locate the closest Potentials? I don’t know how demons keep finding them, but we don’t want to be caught unawares again.”

Jack’s saucy salute did not seem by the book or sincere. “You got it, Watcher-man. I’ll see if Samira can help.”

“Uh-huh,” said Robby, finally with a smirk of his own. “Don’t have too much fun.”

Jack winked. “Apologize to the new girl for me,” he said, then gestured in a pattern Robby would have once known how to parse, causing a ripple to appear in the air above the roof. The ripple opened into a tear, and Jack stepped through; man and tear vanished.

“Show-off,” Robby muttered.

Robby, not being a warlock, had to take the stairs. The occasionally magic-boosted generators didn’t have enough juice to waste on working elevators, and anyway, usually no one was dumb enough to come up to the roof except Robby. He tried to focus on his breathing as he descended down, down, down. In (I can’t); out (not again). In (failed her); out (shoulda been me). Nothing eased the feeling of his chest being squeezed in a vice.

He almost welcomed the distraction when Dana ran into him coming around the corner of the second to last landing. Almost, except she was clutching her head, her eyes squeezed shut in pain. Blood was oozing out of her nose and over the tense curl of her lip. “Robby,” she said, grabbing a hold of his hoodie. “I saw her—”

“It’s okay,” he said, coaxing her to lean on his shoulder as he helped her back down the remaining stairs to the basement. “The Council called, I know who she is—why don’t you sit—”

“No,” said Dana, with that fierceness that always increased post-vision. She let Robby plop her down but refused to give up the death grip on his shirt until he looked at her, listened. “Vamps have already found her. They’re coming for her now and she’s all alone, she’s brand new—”

“Heather! Cassie!” Robby was shouting for backup before he’d consciously planned his next move. Heather emerged from the armory holding an axe and a sharpening stone, Cassie from the supply closet where she was no doubt taking yet another meticulous inventory of their collection of herbs, crystals, candles, assorted other spell ingredients, and charms. “We gotta roll out,” he said to Heather. “New Slayer’s in trouble.”

“Already?” said Heather, then held up a hand. “Sorry, stupid question.”

“What about me, am I in on this field trip?” asked Cassie.

“Can you stay here and look after Dana? And—” Robby cut off Dana’s protest. “—be here in case Jack and Samira come back with any of the Potentials they’re searching for? I know Jack’s really…” Despite the urgency, he did not hold back on the knowing look. “…persuasive, and Samira backing him up helps, but I’d feel better about him bringing a bunch of young women back to what appears to be an abandoned hospital if someone who looks normal is here to greet them.”

“You think I look normal?” said Cassie. “Like, human-normal? Rude.”

“Normal in a still-super-scary, still very vengeance-y way,” Heather said, coming back in with a different, sharper axe and a pair of wooden stakes. She tossed one to Robby, who didn’t bring shame on himself by failing to catch it.

“Thanks a lot,” said Cassie, dryly, before whirling back to Dana and uttering, in a commanding tone that surely once struck fear into the hearts of men, “You! Sit.”

Dana waved a torn-off sheet of notebook paper in her face. “Can I give them this lifesaving information first? Thanks.” She pressed the paper into Robby’s free hand. “That’s everything I remember. They were down near the river—”

“Okay, we’re on our way,” Robby promised, with a nod to Heather. “Cassie, can you get her—”

But Cassie was already bringing Dana a glass of water and poking at her shoulder until she sat back down.

They didn’t talk much on the drive. There was no use in speculating: they would either be on time to save the girl, or they wouldn’t. And they both already knew what the other would say. Heather, who—despite everything that had happened to her, everything she’d endured—still believed in The Powers That Be more than Robby did, would argue that Dana wouldn’t be sent a vision if it didn’t give them time to act. Robby would, chest clenching, point out all the times that that still hadn’t been enough. That all of them, working together, still weren’t enough. People died. The world only kept spinning at a terrible cost. Better not to say anything.

He could see the shimmer of the river in the distance—almost, almost there—when Heather broke the rules that apparently only lived in Robby’s head. “We can help her,” she said, voice low but firm. “Whoever she is, we can help her survive this.” He could feel her eyes burning into him; he kept his own gaze fixedly on the road. “Robby,” Heather said, not letting up. “Like you helped me.”

“You died,” Robby pointed out, making a right-hand turn without letting his eyes stray to the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” said Heather, with a nostalgic attempt at levity, “but I got better.”

“She didn’t,” Robby said flatly, and it spread there in the silence: the name of their last Slayer, that neither of them could yet bear to say.

“This time it’ll be—”

“Shit!” Robby threw the car into park and bolted out the door, Heather hot on his heels and then swiftly surpassing him. Down by the river, just as Dana had said, a young woman with blonde hair tied back in a braid was fighting for her life against a trio of vampires. As Heather drew nearer—but not close enough, not yet, not yet—one of them grabbed her by the throat and pulled her toward the points of his glistening fangs—

Robby was contemplating a foolish, Hail Mary toss of his stake when the vamp exploded into dust.

Robby blinked, stride breaking for half a second. Heather didn’t seem close enough, but she’d been the most talented Slayer he ever met, maybe she— But no, there was a stake in the young woman’s own hand—he could see her smiling down at it, looking half-amazed herself. Then one of the other vampires bowled into her back.

Heather got that one: quick, efficient, dust. The girl, unhurt on the ground, coughed and sat up. Heather offered her a hand, calling, “Robby? Incoming,” with barely a glance over her shoulder.

“On it,” said Robby, catching the now-obviously-fledgling vamp by the back of his Steelers jersey as he tried to flee. He fell back neatly onto the point of Robby’s stake in a move that looked quite cool, thank you. So naturally, no one was watching.

Robby looked around: he couldn’t see any other dangers lurking along the banks of the Allegheny River, except, you know, trash and evidence of chemical runoff. He took a deep breath and willed his heart rate to return to normal. It was time to put on his Watcher face and break to this girl the worst news of her life.

“Melissa King?” he said, stepping forward.

The girl with the blonde braid paused in brushing herself off. Robby noticed with amusement that she had handed her stake to Heather for safekeeping—and then, with alarm, that it was a proper stake, not a weapon a resourceful new Slayer had improvised out of instinct. “Oh, it’s Mel, actually,” the girl said. She straightened her glasses.

“Mel.” Robby tried for a reassuring smile. “My name is Michael Robinavitch. I represent an organization called the Watchers Council.”

“Oh! Yes, your friend said you’d be coming.”

“Friend?” asked Heather, clearly trying to keep her tone level, even as she shot Robby a worried look.

“Yes,” said the girl—Mel—adjusting her glasses again. Robby wondered if she’d started to notice that she no longer needed them. “The one who explained to me that I’m the Slayer?”

“Who explained to you—” This girl was the third Slayer who had been put in his charge; by now he should know what he was doing. But they were already so off-script that Robby was shocked to find himself floundering.

“Mel,” said Heather, kindly, even as she nervously spun the stake in her dominant hand, “what did he look like, this man?”

“Um.” The girl looked between them, anxious; she could obviously tell that something was amiss. Considering that on top of discovering vampires were real and you were destined to fight them, this could not have been an easy night for her—yet she was keeping it together admirably well. “He was handsome—uh, I mean, objectively speaking.” Even in the dim light, her blush was evident. “Dark hair, a dimpled chin—”

“Frank,” Heather breathed.

The girl’s smiling mouth flatlined. “He said he was your friend,” she said, sounding lost, betrayed—like the weight of everything was hitting all at once.

“Not exactly,” Robby managed to say, over the roaring in his ears. Not anymore.

“But you’re okay, you’re safe,” said Heather. Thank god for Heather: beautiful liar that she was. “We’re here to help you.”

She looked to Robby. There was no accusation in her gaze, but he still felt it. Do your job, Mikey.

“Yes,” he gritted out. “Destiny has chosen you—the one girl in all the world to stand against vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness.”

“Gosh,” said Mel.

“But not alone,” Robby promised. “Heather—” He nodded at her. “—She’s been where you are, and she and I and all our friends will do everything in our power to help you.”

“And clearly you’re a natural!” Heather said. She handed Mel’s stake back to her.

The stake Frank had given her, Robby realized. Possibly one Frank himself had carved, sitting side by side with Robby in the headquarters they’d built, atop the Hellmouth the Watchers Council never believed they could keep at bay, that they’d almost succeeded in sealing forever. Almost.

What was a vampire doing arming a Slayer? Giving her the weapon that could kill him instead of killing her?

But Robby couldn’t think about that now. Robby couldn’t think—

“Mel, are you all right to come with us, so we can explain?” Heather asked.

She nodded.

With lightning-fast Slayer reflexes, Heather snagged the keys right out of Robby’s pocket.

“I’ll drive,” she said.

Back at the Hellpitt—Robby refused to take responsibility for the nickname—all the lights were on and the place was abuzz. Mel walked in ahead of them, wide-eyed—more awe than was warranted, really: they hadn’t exactly had a redecorating budget, so the place still looked like an abandoned hospital that had been sneezed on, in turn, by an armory, an apothecary, a library, and a thrift store stocked solely with furniture scrounged from a 1990s teachers’ lounge. Jack and Samira had returned, and were sitting on the mismatched pair of couches with a trio of alternately confused and annoyed looking girls who seemed only somewhat placated by the cupcakes they were eating.

Cassie was no doubt responsible for the cupcakes. Since she had become human, she’d been convinced that cupcakes, if they didn’t solve, then at least ameliorated every problem. Robby took a chocolate one and decided not to choose this moment to disagree with her.

“Everyone,” he said, through a bite (Unprofessional, muttered Underwood in his brain, undignified!), “this is Mel. The new Slayer.”

Mel waved.

“Welcome,” said Jack, stretching out a hand. “Rough break.”

“Is it?” asked Mel, anxiety tinging her words again.

“It’s a cult,” said one of the other girls—likely one of the Potential Slayers who had just-not-quite been chosen this time. (And hopefully, if Robby did his job right, never would be.) “I can’t believe you convinced me to come to your murder basement.” She flicked her cupcake wrapper away and stood up. “What was I thinking?”

“You saw them do magic!” said another girl.

“Did I?” asked the first one. “Did you? You fainted as soon as that lady like, spun her hands around and said ‘boo!’”

“I did a full transmutation!” protested Samira, looking to Jack for confirmation. He gave her a thumbs up.

“Um, regardless,” said the third Potential, the one with the thatch of dirty blond hair who had, until now, mostly been staring at the floor. Robby was surprised by the sound of the kid’s voice, and by their face, when they looked up. He didn’t want to assume, but— “I’m not really sure why I’m here? Setting aside the, uh, vampire aspect…” The kid swallowed. “If she’s your one girl in all the world, and we’re supposed to be the, uh, leftover girls, well… I’m not?”

“So it’s a trans-inclusive creepy cult,” said the Potential with the attitude. Technically, she had dodged a bullet—but also, so it seemed, had Robby.

“Um, I’m cis?” said the boy. Who was a cis boy? Robby shot Jack a look.

“I triple-checked,” said Jack, folding his arms.

“Okay,” said Robby, shrugging, because really this was the least of his concerns.

The Potentials were still going at it: “Are you sure?”

“You can’t ask him if he’s sure!”

“Oh, whatever, Crash, we’re probably all about to have our organs harvested so—”

“Hey,” Robby shouted, in his best Watcher-voice.

He hadn’t lost that: everyone shut up.

He waited till all their eyes were on him: the Potentials, his team. His new Slayer. Then he spoke from the heart.

“I know this is a lot to process. This has been a life-changing night. The world as you knew it has been fundamentally altered, and you know now that there are monsters lurking in the shadows—monsters you probably thought were just myths and stories to frighten children, but that are very, very real. Unchecked, they hurt innocent people. But everyone in this room, you’ve been blessed and burdened with the ability to prevent that. I know this place doesn’t look like much, but what we do here is we try to save people. We don’t always succeed—but we try. All I’m asking is for you to try.”

He felt his voice catch, his throat scrape. A cup of water was forced into his hand; Cassie backed away, winking. He took a slow, grateful sip.

“So listen. Slayers used to fight alone.” He saw Mel’s shoulders fold in as everyone turned to look at her. He offered her a reassuring smile and shook his head. “But that’s stupid. That’s not how we do it here. We’re a team. We’ve got a witch, a warlock,” he nodded at Samira and Jack, “a seer,” a smile to Dana, “a former Vengeance Demon—”

“A what?” said the mouthy Potential, as Cassie smirked.

“The first ever Slayer emeritus,” he said, hand alighting briefly on Heather’s shoulder, “which, let me tell you, is a fucking miracle, just like her—”

She rolled her eyes at him, as he deserved.

“And you three are Potential Slayers,” he said, addressing the new trio. “Which means you have the strength of a Slayer within you, even if it’s not as obvious.”

“Her strength is supposed to be obvious?” asked the Potential, pointing at Mel.

“Yeah, um, about that…” said Mel.

“You’ll see,” Robby promised them. “All of you are stronger than you know.”

“Okay, thanks, Professor X. Nice inspirational speech. What’s your mutant power, then?”

Robby took a deliberate breath. “Good question,” he said. “What’s your name?”

She stuck her chin out defiantly. “Trinity Santos.”

“Okay, Trinity.” He looked encouragingly at the other two.

“Oh! Victoria.”

“Dennis.”

“Yeah, okay, no self-respecting trans guy would call himself Dennis.”

Jack saved him from having to diffuse that by bursting out laughing. “Mike, I think this is cosmic payback for all that demon-summoning in college.”

“Well, thank you for bringing that up,” Robby said. But at least Trinity’s sharp gaze was back now on him, instead of the beleaguered and paradoxical Dennis. “Anyway, to answer your question, Trinity, I am your Watcher.”

“Ew.”

“Which is an old, perhaps out of date term that means I am here to answer all your questions. To train you. To equip you. To fight beside you.”

“At least until he throws his back out again,” said Jack.

“Very helpful,” said Dana.

“So—you’re like our teacher?” asked Victoria.

Robby started to nod, but Jack—who was clearly in a mood tonight—interrupted again. “He’s your rabbi, kid.”

Robby’s hand moved, unconsciously, to his chest. “Sure,” he said on an exhale. “Any and all of those things. You can call it what you like. The point is, I’m here to guide you and protect you.”

He heard his voice break a little, on the last words. He hoped the kids didn’t. Heather squeezed his hand.

“Well, I for one feel safer already,” said Trinity, sarcasm dripping.

But she stayed and had another cupcake.

Later—much later than he’d intended—Robby finally managed to find a moment alone with his new Slayer.

She’d stepped into one of the dimly-lit former exam rooms and was staring down at her cellphone, lips pursed. “Am I interrupting?” Robby asked.

She looked up, a trace of guilt ghosting across her face. She tucked the phone into her back pocket. “No, no, I just—”

She hesitated. Robby leaned back against the counter, still stacked with dusty equipment that, in another life—one in which the wonders and tragedies that befell him in college hadn’t occurred—he might have known how to use. He waited, as he had learned how to wait: for her to confide in him, if and when she chose.

“I have a sister,” she said. “She—she’s living somewhere good now, but she still needs me. I take care of her.” Her small, pale hands clenched and released. “Am I still going to be able to take care of her?”

It wasn’t not a complication—a Slayer with family. Underwood, certainly, had always adhered to the old Council tradition that “the girls” should be fully separated from their old lives, any connections that could distract. But Heather—and Jack, to be honest—had helped him learn how misguided that was.

Robby nodded, making sure Mel could see the sincerity in his eyes. “Of course. You’re not alone in that or anything else. That’s the point of this place, the way we do things.”

She’d find out the harsh truth of the rest of it soon enough. But for the moment the sweet, relieved smile on her face was a balm.

So the next words she spoke were even more like a slap. “That’s what he said, the man I met. Frank?” Robby wanted to cut her off, but his throat had gone dry. “He said you would train me, protect me, lead me to my destiny.”

She said it brightly, but the words soured to sinister in Robby’s ears. Frank knew better than anyone what a Slayer’s natural destiny was. It had found him too, as a trainee Watcher: death. Or worse.

Robby shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie so she wouldn’t see the way his nails were digging into his palms. “Okay, first lesson about vampires. It’s a hard one, but one we all have to learn. When a person gets turned—when a vampire bites them and drinks from them and feeds them their own blood—that person dies. It may look like they’re still walking around, that they’re the same person that you knew, but that’s just a mask. Their true face is the one underneath, the…” He hesitated.

“The bumpy ‘grr’ face?” Mel asked, miming claws.

“Yeah,” said Robby with a sigh. “The demon’s face. Because that’s what vampires are—demons who have evicted their victims’ souls. And that can be deadly to forget.”

His Slayer nodded, thinking, taking this in. Then she licked her lips and asked, “How do you know?”

Always a good question. “The Council has been studying vampires and demons for centuries. They’ve observed—”

“But you don’t—sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Mel cut herself off, flushing.

“No, go on,” said Robby, gamely. He liked that she wasn’t just swallowing everything down, hook, line, and sinker. That she was questioning, guiding herself to understand.

“Well, I mean…” The glasses got nudged up again. “It’s clear—sorry, but it’s clear you don’t always agree with the Council. They’re the ones who used to have Slayers fight alone, right, like you said, and you think that’s stupid.”

Robby felt a rush of pride: his Slayer was smart. Obviously, that was nothing to do with him, but it still made him feel a fragment of that feeling—a breath of relief that suggested everything might be okay.

“Yup,” he confirmed. “The Council doesn’t approve of how we do things. But they’ve compiled volumes and volumes of evidence, over hundreds and hundreds of years—including first-hand testimony to the nature of vampires. That’s hard to doubt.”

“But there’s always new evidence to consider, isn’t there?”

Robby regarded her. Maybe Trinity Santos wasn’t the only difficult one.

Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

Mel flushed again, though, and looked away. “Sorry, I’m in medical school—some people call it an ‘uncertain science’ because there are so many things we don’t know, new things we’re always discovering. It’s made me think about things in a different way, maybe.”

“Really,” said Robby. He felt an odd sort of resonance chime through his chest, like the tolling of a distant bell. “You know, that’s how Jack and I met, actually. Well,” he shrugged, “we only got as far as pre-med. Our paths diverged significantly after that, as you may have noticed,” he added wryly.

“That’s so funny,” said Mel. “And then somehow we all ended up here, in this—abandoned hospital?”

Her real question—why here—was evident. “Let’s save the lesson on what’s in the sub-basement for another day,” advised Robby. “For now…”

He considered his words. He knew he should shut this line of inquiry down, now, completely: vampires were not like in the movies, sparkly and sympathetic. You couldn’t trust them, couldn’t look at them and believe you could see a shadow of the person they used to be lurking behind their eyes. You had to stake or behead or burn them, and comfort yourself by knowing that in doing so, you were setting what little remained of your friend free.

“I don’t want you to stop asking questions. You’re right, I don’t have all the answers; I know what I know from thirty years of experience, but I would never claim that all my knowledge is definitive. But I need you to be safe.”

Mel bit her lip.

Robby pulled a hand free from his hoodie and made an out with it gesture.

“He said you’d say that,” she murmured.

It was more emotion than he should show his Slayer—ever, Underwood would argue, but certainly not when they’d just met. Still, Robby couldn’t help scuffing a hand through his hair as he turned away, sighing.

“Mel King,” he said, looking at two tipped over IV stands casting eerie shadows on the wall, “I can tell you’re going to be a hell of a Slayer.” He risked a glance back at her. “And this has been a hell of a first night.”

“Well…only up from here, right?” suggested Mel with good cheer that Robby suspected wasn’t entirely put on.

L'shana haba'ah b'Yerushalayim. Looking at her, the closing words of the Passover seder floated into Robby’s brain. Next year in Jerusalem. To Robby, more than a literal place, the words had always represented hope. Next year it will be different. Next year, things will be better.

Robby let go of the breath he was holding. “I hope so,” he said, guiding his Slayer back out into the light, to where their team was waiting. “If I have anything to say about it.”