Submitted for Feedback - 'Pulling Punches'

~ October 12, 2003
Detroit, Michigan ~


The concrete was cold. It spread out in front of the motel like a gray-white carpet traversed with cracks. Here and there a weed grew through it, and there were ants running everywhere. She hadn’t known that until she sat down. Rhiannon stuck out her leg and watched them scuttle around the mountain it made. An empty soda can attracted some, with the promise of sugar inside. When she spilled a few drops, she wondered how that looked from the ant perspective... a giant mound of water holding itself upright.

Overhead, a yellow light bulb attracted moths. They rapped it with their wings.

How long had she been there? Something like a half hour. Sooner or later the guy would come back, she knew, because his car was still parked there. At least the cherry slush was gone. It hadn’t even rained, so he must’ve washed it. Rhiannon considered giving him a five to cover it.

Calling the market a convenience store was as appropriate as calling wrestling a sport. Whistler'd been up and down the aisles five times, digging through shelves for boxes of macaroni and cheese and other soups he could cook in a coffee pot. The Powers promised a no-limit credit card to help with expenses as the Agent ran cross-continent. But the problem with that was he wasn't in one place long enough to get mail.

The liquor store was next and a six-pack of Budweiser cans dangled from fingers. No chance even for a cigarette, as the embers could catch on the paper bags jumbled in his arms. He rounded the corner back to the side of the motel, retraced his steps to room sixteen.

The autumn air blew and Rhiannon pulled her knees up to her chest. Rather than wrapping arms around, she cradled them between to compensate for having on thin sleeves. It felt like November out there already. She didn’t hear the rustle of bags that would announce Whistler’s coming because a car pulled into a nearby space, its windows down, an R&B track doling out bass.

She squinted away from headlights that felt accusatory; she was a girl on stage, put on the spot and asked the question, What are you doing there? Funny how she hadn’t wondered until now. She just walked out of the house and kept on going. But the familiarity of home -- the tiny television set, the well used kitchen table, the bedroom walls covered in her handwriting and old doodles -- felt off-kilter now. It was a microcosm that paled in the shadow of a bigger world. Rhiannon was Dorothy and, having caught sight of a Technicolor world outside her window, it was torture waiting to get to it.

"Oh great," Whistler grumbled as he walked past room eleven. They were having sex. Again. They kept the entire floor awake last night. Could've sworn an earthquake had struck.

He was so far from home, both in distance and time. How long had it been since Whistler had spent any amount of time in one city? A year? Ten? How much of that was circumstance and what amount was choice? Whistler had been on the road for so long, he'd tell you what highway he was driving based on how the tires gripped the asphalt. But he couldn't remember the last time he felt comfortable.

The Agent promised to stay until Friday. Whistler hadn't made a guarantee to anyone for as long as he'd had his hat, and that was bordering on years. What if she asked him to stay another week? Would he? Could he? Should he suck it up, pick up the Slayer tomorrow and get her to Collins, keep all conversation to a minimum? Something to think about over mac and cheese and Wheel of Fortune.

The lights went down, the music stopped, and the car emptied its passengers onto the curb. They were boisterous, a trio of twenty-somethings that climbed the stairs to the second floor with boxes of Chinese take-out. Rhiannon watched their shoes. Her stomach growled. She kind-of wanted a cigarette.

On her right, Whistler mumbled under his breath. Rhiannon heard it and looked up. “Hey.” She went to her feet in a hurry, like maybe a few of those ants had gotten into her clothes. A twist of fingers. Stop doing that, you look like a nervous freak. Rhiannon put them behind her back instead, a blind reach for hip pockets and gratitude that she had some.

Eyes peeped over packages, the smile muffled by paper.

Stop that, she'll think you're droolin' and call the cops.

She can't see through paper.

You don't know that. The rules changed in May. There's more than one Slayer now. What if they got new superpowers like x-ray vision?

And she’s sixteen.

"Hey." A slight swivel as he side-stepped to put the bags and beer on the roof of what Whistler hoped was his car. It was cool to the touch so it wasn't the raucous group’s heading upstairs. "What brings you over? Not that you ain't welcome."

Rhiannon pulled her lower lip into her mouth. She went over and picked up a grocery bag, in case he had to fish for his room key. “You said I should come by if I had questions.” It wasn’t until after her brain scrounged up the excuse that she realized she needed to make up some, fast.

It wasn’t that Rhiannon had no questions. It was more like she had too many, so none announced themselves as frontrunners. Furthermore, she knew in her gut that no matter how scary the answers might be, she wouldn’t care. Lying in bed the last two nights, her imagination crawled with possibilities, and her chest hummed like it was full of bees. She was a mess of old insecurities and new bits of confidence that attempted to bloom in the others’ wake.

“Is now okay?” A carton of cigarettes poked out of the grocery bag. Rhiannon leaned her face around it. “If you’re busy, I mean...”

The room key, a small piece of silver that dangled on a triangle of plastic, popped out of his breast pocket with a little help from grubby fingers. The Agent slipped it into the lock and twisted. "Nah, not busy," he offered. He retrieved the rest of the bags but shuffled through the door, assuming she would follow behind him. The sounds from room eleven were muffled somewhat but without the drone of the television set, could still be made out. "Just picked up a few things. Hungry?"

Rhiannon had questions. Whistler hoped he had answers.

Sure, she had them. Beginning with, “Are those your neighbors?” It was better to name the elephant in the room than pretend she didn’t notice it.

Rhiannon stared at the offending wall, with no concept of just how far the noise traveled to get there. “It sounds like... German porn.” She unloaded her bag, had the nonsensical urge to rustle the paper bag unnecessarily and a lot. It reminded her of watching cable movies with her dad, hoping there was some kind of fade-out, and when there was no such luck, wondering whether she should bail or crack a joke.

"Should you know about German porn?" The frightening bit was, the Slayer was right. And for all Whistler knew, they could have a full crew inside filming it for later distribution.

Whistler upended the contents of his grocery bag, putting the spoilable items (including four of the six-pack of beer) into the mini-refrigerator. Dinner could wait. An unsure host, he left a can near where Rhiannon stood, opened one for himself. One thing he could offer was a Pall Mall from the open pack on the table. And, as the sounds beyond became background noise, Whistler focused on what the teenager had come for.

"Alright, question number two?"

“Should you know about German porn?”

Rhiannon smiled, open and young in a way she’d lose over the years, when she stopped trusting people to see it. She sat on the foot of his bed without asking and held the cigarette in a more practiced way. This time, she borrowed his lighter and lit up herself. “Well,” a careful inhale, a relieved exhale when it didn’t burn so much, “I was wondering what happened to me, that day when I got... Called. Did I do something to make it happen?” And is there any chance it might go away by accident, too?

"Well the obvious effects you probably noticed right away," the Agent offered. "The strength, probably stamina. Like if you were in gym class and the teacher demanded you run laps, you didn't get as easily winded. Not to mention healing. That's pretty cool. Not like a broken bone immediately mends itself but your recuperation time is really cut low." Whistler crossed over to the corner table and took a seat. He took a long drag of his cigarette before putting it down in favor of a swig of his beer.

"Before that, you were what was considered a Potential. Like when the previous Slayer... passed the torch, you could've been the one to take over. Or maybe never. But back in May there was a really huge fight, and a lot of girls like yourself had been rounded up for it. Taken to a place in California called Sunnydale. And the current Slayer had a plan to give everyone the same gift with a magic spell, and that's what they did.

"So no, Rhi." Another drag of the cigarette. "It wasn't anything you did. And as far as we know, there's no goin' back."

“Magic.” Rhiannon said the word carefully, as if the admission that it existed was harder than vampires, or that it was volatile enough to take a life of its own. “Is that how she passed the torch always? A spell?” The end of her cigarette turned gray and threatened to crumble away, if she didn’t tap it soon. The only ashtray was on his table, though. Rhiannon didn’t go over.

In her mind, incantations and conjuring spells and crystal balls were preposterous. She told herself maybe it wasn’t so different from praying and expecting results, and god knew she’d done that enough times, but this was harder to trust. Mainly because her concept of god’s unseen ‘miracles’ put the mystical hoodoo in His hands. All things otherwise? She preferred to see with her own eyes, in cold, hard evidence... The laws that governed the physical world rather than the mystical.

Maybe it was in her nature. She was born to seek results with her fists.

He got up, stepped to the edge of the bed with the ashtray. He offered the glass to Rhiannon while he paced. "Not quite."

The Agent told the truth when he met up with each new Slayer. They had to know the world they were born into, what they could expect. Their life expectancy. And yet Whistler held back. Not that the brunette couldn't understand the reality, which any sane person would admit had a serious downside for all the power and good they could do with it.

He didn't want to admit it would happen to Rhiannon. "They died."

Her heart stuttered.

Rhiannon tried not to react, but her eyes said it all. The awful realization of what was expected of her didn‘t sink in. It collided like a sledgehammer. Wham. You’re in this to die. She went a shade too pale.

“Oh.” The ashes fell shy of the tray, rested in a smoldering pile on her shoe instead.

‘You're gonna make it.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Yeah. Why wouldn't you?’

“You must think I’m stupid.” Rhiannon’s throat felt thick. It had gone scratchy. She needed to clear it.

This part, Whistler definitely sucked at. He took another drag of his cigarette before finding the unopened can of beer and bringing it to her. Shit, if someone told Whistler that no matter the good he did, he'd end up dead? He'd want alcohol too.

"Nah," he offered, eyes soft and a small smile. Not forced. Caring as much as he could. "You didn't have a Watcher before this. No handbook to give you a heads-up. Hell, if they hadn't done the spell, you could've lived your entire life never knowing what might've been.

"And I meant what I said the other day."

She wondered which part.

A flip of the tab and her beer can opened up, a sigh on otherwise quiet air. At some point in the conversation, the neighbors had stopped. Rhiannon took a sip. One part she remembered for sure was Whistler telling her she didn’t have to. That hundreds or maybe thousands of girls had a ‘gift’ like hers, and could choose whether to open it or shelve it. For Rhiannon, it felt like winning the lottery, only to discover she wouldn’t live long enough to spend it.

Go back and live your life like before. Draw your pictures. Finish high school. Pretend like you won’t end up pointless, a girl with a shitty day job she’ll get to keep day in and day out for fifty years. A long, regular life.

But what was the weight of a life like that? Could it compare to even a month spent like a Slayer?

Rhiannon licked her lips. She tapped her cigarette into the ashtray, a methodical movement, controlled. “I’m gonna do it anyway.”

That made sense. Not a lot in Whistler's life did. But there was something about the brunette. A calmness about her. Accepting.

He wondered if she was on the short-list before the spell was cast. The Powers would've been stupid not to have considered it.

"Okay."

The Agent sucked back the last of his cigarette before ashing it into the tray. "You hungry? I make pretty decent mac and cheese. Comfort food, before you're subjected to a steady diet of yorkshire pudding and bland roast beef?"

Rhiannon hoped to god he was kidding about the roast beef part. Two months ago, her dad took a job at the slaughterhouse in the Eastern Market. Ever since, he came home bearing packages of raw meat and smelling like livestock insides, and she could no longer stomach the thought of a hamburger. Forget about a hunk of it that actually looked like it belonged on a cow.

“I like mac and cheese,” she hedged. Rhiannon pushed her cigarette into the tray. She held onto her can of beer with two hands. “Can I ask another question while we make it?”

"That's why you're here." The coffee pot was retrieved and filled with water from the bathroom sink. Whistler flipped the switch and waited for the plate to heat up and boil the water. It was crude, it probably broke three kinds of laws, and it worked when you didn't have a functioning kitchen.

She turned the can in circles, and watched the tab go round and round. “What’s Collins like? Did you meet him?” Rhiannon looked over, thinking maybe he’d say the truth if she met him eye to eye.

The water came to boil, and the Agent added the noodles. He did the mental math, that the prep time would take approximately five minutes before the legendary cheese sauce. He met Rhiannon's gaze. "No. I haven't," he answered honestly. "The Powers That Be -- those I work for -- don't screen that part. That's supposedly up to the Watcher's Council. They wouldn't have trained him all those years if he was a dick." Damn, he hoped Collins wasn't an asshole.

She mentally chewed on that. There was a part of Rhiannon that hoped he was tough. Maybe it’d make her better, and she wouldn’t be passing the torch off anytime soon.

She wondered if he worried about her, too. For all she knew, Collins might be holed up in his study right now (or wherever Watchers hung out), considering his options if she turned out to be a certified screw-up. “What if I’m not good at it? Do they toss you out for that? I don’t know, maybe there’s a girl in... Louisiana or somewhere who’s better.”

The gurgle of water and noodles proved hypnotic. Whistler stared at their dinner as he mulled over Rhiannon's concerns. If she wasn't adept at slaying, the teen wouldn't get tossed; she'd be buried.

No pressure.

As for the girl from Ipanema taking her place. The rules hadn't changed that much. One falls, another rises.

Right? Right?

Fine time for the Powers to stop nattering in Whistler's ear.

"You're good enough, Rhiannon," he answered. "If you feel like you need practice before getting with your Watcher, well we've got another four minutes 'til the noodles are done."

She put the beer between her shoes. The can fit snugly in the arches, safe unless she moved. “I thought you couldn’t teach me,” she said. It was a difficult comment, not because it challenged a previous thing he said, but because Rhiannon sounded careful about asking. Like she didn’t want to know if he lied, but couldn’t help herself. The girl had a tendency to look for inconsistencies in stories, ways to kick an early warning system into gear in case someone would be a disappointment.

Even so, Rhiannon tucked her fingers under her thighs and squeezed them until they hurt. He said practice. Her instincts - and through them, her hands - said now.

"Not teachin'. Sparrin'. Completely different."

Whistler hated rules. He accepted the assignment from the Powers because he knew the tapped Potentials needed to be collected, offered assistance, trained. That they then imposed a rules list the length of his arm pissed him off royally.

It reminded him of his time with Angel. He took the vampire with a soul to Sunnydale, introduced him to his future, his love, his executioner. The boys (girls? androgeny?) upstairs knew since the moment he was bitten that the vamp would one day set in motion an apocalypse that may or may not have been averted by the Chosen One.

Whistler caught hell for showing up on Buffy's doorstep. But he didn't exactly break the rules. The Agent asked questions, the blonde provided the answers. As for now? Well he wasn't training Rhiannon. He offered her a temporary fight club.

And the first rule of fight club...

“So..,” she tread carefully, not perceiving his backdrop but noticing how he split hairs, “We could take hits at each other, but... you couldn’t tell me how.” Rhiannon twisted her wrist, plucked at the thin bedspread between thumb and forefinger. She dared a look and hoped he didn’t know that she liked the idea.

The freedom to hit and be forgiven. Praised for it.

It might be an accurate portrait of the brunette, but those weren’t her best colors. The guilt of it ate her alive. Decent people didn’t dream about fighting the way she did, waking or asleep. Full color, in high definition. Sometimes she imagined how it’d be to open up and just... wail on something. It set her nerves on fire.

Sex wasn’t a good substitute either, or so she’d recently discovered. Deep down, she caught herself hoping that was Nevin’s fault. Then she felt bad all over again.

"Experience," he nodded. "Ballin' your fist, feelin' it connect against your opponent. Discoverin' where to hit, whether it's more important than how much force you put into the throw. Knowin' when they're gonna hit back."

Water spit from the coffee urn. "One sec." Whistler put out his cigarette, snatched the pot and, with lid secured, dumped almost all of the water out into the bathroom sink. He tore open the cheese pack with teeth and swirled the mixture together. Coffee creamers were added to thicken the mix and all was put back on the burner.

"Right, should be good to eat after I kick your ass." Whistler adopted a defensive stance, brought fingers together and crooked them towards the Slayer.

There was a minute when Rhiannon sat stunned. It was different from being attacked behind the store, scrambling into survival mode just to save her ass. This was premeditated punching or kicking, and she wasn’t certain which. She remembered play fights with cousins, five to ten years ago. All the kids agreed not to get upset or rat to parents, and yet somebody always got hurt and cried about it after.

He didn’t look like the sort to cry. Rhiannon seriously hoped she wasn’t, either.

“Okay.” Putting her beer on the TV, the Slayer tried to remember about zones of attack, which was a lesson she blew off in self-defense seminar at gym class. Hard to buy into it when she knew stomping a person's instep wouldn’t keep their switchblade from slitting her throat.

She picked up her fists and carefully curled her thumbs around. That’s how it got broken before. No amount of fast healing made it hurt less. Rhiannon looked him over, emulated how he put his feet. One, two...

Breathe.

Punch.

The throw came faster than he expected. An equal measure of surprise and delight spread across his face as the fist connected with his ribs. He suspected Rhiannon held back. Was she afraid of the power or just unawares of how much she possessed?

One way to find out.

The Agent feinted with his left hand, swept under with his right fist.

And she was well ahead of him.

At least, for the left hand. Rhiannon missed it by a mile. As for the other fist, she wasn’t so lucky. It nailed her in the diaphragm, at just the tender place where the ribcage split to either side. Until he hit her, she hadn’t known she held her breath.

It came out rough, a truncated cough of surprise. The automatic response of an untrained girl was to protect the wound, and Rhiannon caught herself about to do just that. Why? So he can hit you again, this time in the face?

She left it alone and put her fists back up. “That kind of hurt,” she said. But she was exhilarated, and her faced glowed with it. He hit her. Like a real Slayer, someone he credited with the ability to take a punch. He hit her. Now she wanted to hit him back.

Rhiannon was a study in raw power. She was all brawn and, at that time, no flare. Other Slayers would become more graceful than she, more likely to choose a delicate weapon or to choreograph intricate maneuvers or dance out of reach. They might fight and barely make contact and still win. But even if it made safer sense, it wasn’t her way from the beginning. She wanted to strike and get her hands dirty, to use force of will over technique, despite how it made her vulnerable. Some of that impatience and desire to make things personal went away with maturity and wisdom, but the foundation never changed.

So on day two of Slayer 101, Rhiannon curled her fist and attempted what she always wanted to. She opened up and wailed on someone.

The flurry of blows rained down upon the Agent. For each punch he blocked, another three found their way past his defenses. An uppercut to the jaw, a roundhouse to the kidney. Each felt. Each hurt.

Whistler's nose bled. Red liquid trickled from the corner of his mouth.

"You hit... like a girl," he lied.

He came at Rhiannon, swept his leg in an attempt to throw her off-balance.

She might’ve punched and kicked blood out of his face, but Rhiannon didn’t know the name of anything she threw at him or how to keep her center of gravity while doing it. She grew sloppy. Whistler’s foot hooked around her ankle. Tugged.

Rhiannon went down hard and with torque. In the millisecond before she hit ground, she saw wood coming at her. The space in which they danced was tiny, a mere path between bed and table set. She hit a chair face first on its corner. Saw stars and a little bit of sticky red.

Ohhh, that had to hurt.

Whistler winced and took a step towards the Slayer. "Not bad for your first time. Gonna bruise a bit, but you gotta remember..."

Whistler knelt and drove his fist into the brunette's kidney. "No one's gonna back off just 'cuz you tripped and fell."

Already curled up on the floor, just making sure her eye was in the socket, Rhiannon didn’t have a clue he’d hit her again. So when the pain surged in her lower back, it knocked composure out the door. His words were salt in wounds. He thought she was down for the count.

Rhiannon reached up and snatched the phone off the table. She cracked it over his skull, and the metal bell inside it clanged. She really hoped it was louder in his ears. “Yeah, well neither will I!” A look of disgust apparent, she shoved him out of her way and got off the floor.

He saw stars. And was pretty sure the Slayer saw red.

"Fair gets you killed, Rhi!" he grumbled. "Givin' em enough room to breathe -- hell, lettin' a demon breathe at all durin' a fight..." His voice trailed off.

Whistler was pissed off, mostly at himself. This was the reality of the war she was walking into. A world he wasn't comfortable introducing the Slayer to. A strong reason he kept his distance. Did his job, didn't learn their names, moved on to the next city.

"Jesus, kid..."

Rhiannon sat on a corner of the mattress that sagged in places. She touched her eye, wiped the blood on her cuff. Anger made her breathe heavier, a trait she only noticed because the world had gone so quiet. It seemed as if the hotel listened for what might happen next. She barely recognized herself, the lack of guilt.

“Rhiannon.”

A whiff of something burning caught Whistler's nostrils. He glanced over to see the drying mac and cheese. He wasn't hungry. But he'd be an ungrateful host if he let it go to waste. The Agent walked over and flipped the switch to the plate. He brought over the pot, unwrapped a take-out cutlery package and offered it to the teenager.

"Sorry. Rhiannon," he conceded.

She begrudgingly took hold of the spork and dipped it into the noodles. Rhiannon taste-tested just one before putting the rubbery spoonful in her mouth. She chewed until a little tension melted away and her shoulders came down.

“These are questionable.” An apologetic look for that, at least. Rhiannon unfolded the paper napkin and offered it up to Whistler’s bloody nose. “You look like a cokehead.”

He accepted the napkin and dabbed. It didn't feel broken. "I'm versed on cookin' on a shoestring budget, and for parties of me," he offered in response to the cheesy pasta. A statement that filled in any blanks she might have regarding his life up to this moment. Whistler was a private man to begin with, and while Rhiannon might qualify as the first friend he'd made in over a decade, she wouldn't be in his company long enough to merit a class in Whistler 101.

He didn't know what life would be like for the Slayer once she joined up with her Watcher. It might be worse than the one she led to this point, or it could open up in unimaginable but positive ways. The Agent would just.

Continue. "Don't worry about your eye. The swelling'll go down soon enough and you'll keep your good looks."

Rhiannon snorted and ate some more macaroni. “Right.” Vanity over a black eye was the last thing on her mind, but curiosity had her wondering if his injuries would heal as quickly as hers. She couldn’t decide if she wanted the phone bruise to or not.

“Thanks for dinner.” The teenager reached for her can of beer to wash it down. Once the taste had left her mouth, she scooted over to make room. “Are we still friends?” The spork worked meticulously until each miniature tine had hooked a noodle. “Friends who hit.” She smiled to herself.

Whistler found the remains of his beer and brought the can with him as he sat beside her.

"This is either the start of a beautiful friendship," Whistler chuckled, "or the biggest mistake the two of us are ever gonna make.

"Either way, I'm comfortable with that."

Rhiannon launched a sporkful of noodles at his hat.

“Good to know.”