still_grrr | 164 Fic: The Front Lines

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164 Fic: The Front Lines

Title: The Front Lines
Author: Rebcake
Rating: PG
Word Count: 800
Prompt: 164 – Robin Wood
Characters: Mostly Robin, a smidge of Gunn
Summary: Robin thinks about all the varieties of monster he knows, a couple of years before he comes to Sunnydale.

The main difference between Robin and the other kids was that he never had the luxury of believing that the monster under the bed was imaginary. But he’d had a good upbringing, an excellent education, and a great foster father. He knew the monsters were out there, but Bernard Crowley kept him safe in Beverly Hills.

It didn’t keep him from being an angry young man. Looking back, he realized that was the most clichéd indulgence of his life. All young men felt angry, regardless of their experience in life. If anything, privilege made the anger stronger. It all seemed ridiculous now, to have wasted all that time and energy on a pipe-dream of retribution.

His early professional life showed him just how unique he wasn’t. He worked at middle and high schools in Compton and East LA, stuffed with dozens of kids that had lost family members to violence, drugs, or the whacked-out American corrections system. Even more than the tenuous memories of his mother—slain by a demon—this experience was his call to arms. It was a war that required cunning, heart, and nerves of steel. It emphatically didn’t require stakes, knives, or explosive devices. The monster wasn’t imaginary, and it could not be killed.

Every day he saw bright young minds all around him, too distracted by hunger and basic concerns about safety to focus on school. Every kid was a battlefield, and the staff and (sometimes) the families fought off the demons of poverty, addiction, bad influences, and bad luck. In his off hours, he still fought the monsters he could defeat, in alleys and sewers. It was cathartic and left him with a clear head for the real fight.

The victories were heady. He felt invincible the day he sent Selena Rodriguez off to UC Berkeley and Serena Jackson off to George Washington University, both with full rides. Their families were grateful and at their back-to-back graduation BBQs he was treated like a sultan, right down to the attentive and attractive older cousins and young aunties. The very next day, Marcel Hakim Ulloa—the kid he’d watched graduate two years earlier, against all odds—was killed in a robbery at the store where he clerked. Robin felt like he’d let his guard down, and this was the result.

After the break, and a swath cut through the vamp dens in El Segundo, he coached the girls’ basketball team after school, and then started offering martial arts classes, disguised as self-defense. When word got out, and the classes got too big, he handed off the coaching duties and focused on the martial arts. He even had two classes for boys, as long as they were able to demonstrate self-control. He didn’t know if he was on the right track, but he felt better about things.

It was still a battle every day. He went from math teacher to assistant principal in a few years. He argued with the food services department downtown about the nutritional value of the free lunches. He wrote grants to get poets-in-residence and saw a couple of kids get signed to recording contracts, though nothing fancy. He put the word out to his buddies that had gone corporate (almost all of them) to collect their hotel toiletries and send them his way. You can’t buy soap with food stamps, and lots of his kids had been doing without.

He tried to get the Mock Trial Team off the ground, but when they lost Charles Gunn, it all fell apart. That kid had the most potential of any he’d seen in all his years on the job. Charles was a natural leader, with charisma and intellectual curiosity that he couldn’t hide no matter how he tried. His little sister, Alonna, had a lay-up that was a thing of beauty. He’d thought she might be able to attract some Pac10 attention, once she moved up from the junior varsity team. Charles could go all the way, maybe even Ivy League, with a whole bunch of luck and some calls to old family friends.

Then they stopped coming to school. Charles’ friend Reg said there’d been some “family stuff”, and that Alonna and Charles were okay, but he didn’t think they’d be back. Robin tried to find them, but the address he had was a crime scene and nobody seemed to know the kids’ whereabouts. It was a real blow, and he considered, again, taking that cushy job in Sunnydale. He’d heard that the monsters there might be something he could fight.

He stayed, though, and told himself that he’d give it two more years here in the trenches. He kept fighting for traction every place he could think of. Sometimes it worked. One kid at a time.

It was the mission that mattered.

FIN

If you'd like a peek at Robin Wood's reunion with Gunn, post-Chosen, read my continuation story: Gray Into Gold.

A/N: This story contains a whole lot of US and California state education system factoids, if you were wondering:
1. UC Berkeley is the top public university in California, and George Washington University is a prestigious private university in Washington, DC.
2. A “full ride” means that all costs are covered for your four-year undergraduate education. Books, housing, tuition: the works.
3. Is Mock Trial a US thing? Kids from different schools compete on opposite sides of a, well, mock trial to win fabulous prizes (i.e., bragging rights).
4. The Pac10 are the top ten colleges for athletics on the west coast of the US. Very good schools.
5. The Ivy League is the crème de la crème of US educational institutions. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. Where they make presidents and captains of industry (not the self-made kind, usually).
6. That thing about the soap? Totally true story from a principal friend of mine.

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Ow. This Robin shouldn't have come to Sunnydale. (Maybe that's true, in fact.)

Thanks for the footnotes - Ivy League is not news, but all the others definitely needed explaining!

Educators who work in the neediest schools often burn out and move to the suburbs, thinking it will be easier. They very often end up going back, though, after a year or two of "sabbatical". I thought that Wood considering the Hellmouth a sort of "manageable evil" was both silly and true.

I have this thought now of Gunn running into Wood for the first time in the Rules!verse, and saying, "Mr. Wood? What are you doing here?" and Wood getting all emotional (for him). *bats eyes*

I see what you're doing there, and I'm trying very hard to resist...

I'm just saying, who do you think first taught Gunn hand-to-hand combat? Amirite?

Interesting...I would never have connected Robin Wood to the Gunn family, but it works.

I think there's something like Mock Trial here, but I've never been involved in it. They didn't have it in Western Kentucky.

Clever tale.

When I was coming up, it was Debate Team, but kids these days are all about Mock Trial around here.

When I thought about Wood as a hero and as an educator, it made sense to me that he would combine those two qualities and work with the neediest kids. It was just a little hop to get him into the Gunns' high school. I was also all excited about showing Gunn's potential from an objective source, and foreshadowing his law career. (I had way too much fun with a story that actually made me tear up.)

It was still a battle every day. This Robin had a priority and he fought - for himself and others - everyday.

[I did not know that SOAP could not be purchased with food stamps. Maybe because it is a 'non-food' and taxable [at least in NY].

I tried to show that Wood's heroism ran deep and wide. Those educators who work in the neediest areas are a special breed, and they work against insurmountable odds. Compared to that, what's a little old Hellmouth?

When my friend told me about the soap (and shampoo, toothpaste, laundry detergent, etc.), my heart was a little bit broken. What a vicious cycle in the "land of plenty". Don't even get me started...

This is great!

Thanks, darlin'!

Great look at Robin before his Sunnydale days!

I find that people who want to make a difference and help people often have interesting back stories. :)

Thanks for commenting!

Great way to bring Robin into the RW and make it mesh with the world he knows is out there. Good job!

Snyder to the contrary, I find that people who go into public education are generally idealistic. We already know that Robin is a fighter, so it made sense to me that he would apply that to his professional life. I'm glad it worked for you! Thanks for commenting!

What a richly detailed, sympathetic look at Robin pre-Sunnydale. I like that he can look at himself and recognize that others have it worse than he did, and then he does something about it. He really is fighting the good fight, and the rewards are hard fought and deeply satisfying.

His intersect with the Gunn family worked in this context, and I like that he has no idea the supernatural was involved. I wonder how many students Robin had to lose before he decided to take that cushy job in Sunnydale.

I think that Wood has a pull to help people in all sorts of ways. The dichotomy of straight-arrow educator and bad-ass demon fighter really isn't too far apart, from his perspective.

As for how many kids he lost, the answer is far too many. There is a horrifying statistic that something like 2/3 of all African-American males do not finish high school in California. Since this is the land of the free, we don't have any way of knowing if those kids are working, sick, dead, incarcerated, or have moved to another state. (Yes, I am an education wonk.) Whatever the reasons, I can't help but feel that each one of those kids is more than a number to Robin Wood.

Thanks for commenting!

Oh, I loved this! There isn't nearly enough Robin fic out there, and I really liked that you explored his professional life, because I haven't seen that done before. Figures he'd fight the good fight any way he could. (As a school employee, I also get an impulse to do something... I'm just not sure what, yet.)

ETA: This icon is not entirely appropriate, but it's the only RW one I have.

Edited 2010-04-09 05:00 (UTC)

You're one up on me, because I don't have any Robin Wood icons!

I was inspired to write about Robin Wood: Heroic Educator when I discovered this week that almost 5% of my daughter's 8th grade graduating class is in foster care or homeless. Her school is one of those considered "excellent" by state and federal standards, so what must the proportion of severely disadvantaged kids be at schools that don't meet those standards? You know what I'm talking about, if you work in a school. The challenges are immense, but I see staff members doing amazing things all the time. They offer guitar lessons on their lunch hour, supervise after school sports, and make house calls to talk to families of truants, or those who have suffered a tragedy. I'm so grateful for people who can manage to give a damn in the face of some really long odds.

I'm glad you liked it, and thanks for commenting!

Yes, I do know what I'm talking about - I think it's better here (better social safety net, definitely), but the frustrations and triumphs are still very real, especially in the neighbourhoods where I work.

Excellent story! I can see Robin channeling his anger and his resources toward helping kids not slip through the cracks.

Great parallel between fighting monsters in the Buffyverse and fighting the monstrosity of a system that fails the people it is supposed to help.

I'm glad you liked it! In BtVS, the monsters were almost always metaphors for something else, and I think that the "War on Evil" is similar to the "War on Poverty" and the "War on Drugs". None of them can be completely won, but you have to keep fighting and you can achieve victory in some battles. Sometimes you get a warrior who can bring innovation and meaningful change (Buffy) and sometimes you just have people slogging along trying to make a difference within the framework of the existing system (Robin and thousands of other dedicated educators). I suspect you need both to keep the world turning.

Thanks for commenting!

I didn't understand any of the references except Ivy League, so thanks for that. Could a little understand the context, but only because I've watched The Wire, season 4 of which would be very familiar to this Robin.

Really, really loved this and hope that Robin would be pleased with how Charles turned out.

I'm sure that Wood would be proud and overjoyed to see Charles, post-Chosen. (I'm not exactly sure what he's up to, or he's even alive, post-NFA.) I think Wood would get quite emotional, although it might be hard to tell, from our perspective. ;-) Or maybe they'd both get emotional, and then try to cover. Heh.

I haven't watched The Wire, as I'm afraid it might be a little too real for me. Man's inhumanity to man always gets me down so. Thankfully, we have vampires to dish out the inhumanity, which just seems like good, clean, fun. ¡Yay!

I'm so pleased that you liked the story. I sometimes feel as if I'm tormenting you with my obscure Americanisms, but hopefully footnotes cure all ills! Thanks for commenting!

Ooh-- very cool story. I have such a weakness for fleshing out minor characters; Robin Woods makes an effective bad guy (well, bad guy from my "how dare your hurt my Spike" standpoint, though I do realize he had legitimate reasons) because his backstory is compelling. You've made it much, much more interesting; and I love you for it.

One of the things I love so much about the Buffyverse is that everybody gets layers. None of the scoobies is completely good, and none of the main villains is without redeeming features. I'm not sure you can even class Wood as a villain; more an opponent?

Tying in the Gunns is an especially clever touch. It's officially part of my personal canon!

It didn’t keep him from being an angry young man. Looking back, he realized that was the most clichéd indulgence of his life. All young men felt angry, regardless of their experience in life. If anything, privilege made the anger stronger. It all seemed ridiculous now, to have wasted all that time and energy on a pipe-dream of retribution.

I love this passage! Very in character IMO.

¡Yay! I'm glad you liked it. I'm with you on the minor character love, but I don't know if I would have been tempted by Wood if this prompt hadn't coincided with some stuff going on at my kid's school. Because, yeah, he isn't a villain, but he is one of many antagonists for our Spikey! I feel that coming to Sunnydale, which he thought would be easier, ended up testing him on the weaknesses he thought he'd outgrown. Still, he's an intelligent, honorable man, and I find myself with a lot of empathy for his un-winnable situation. He's chosen some very tough fights.

I had no plan of including the Gunns in this, but as I went along, it just seemed to make sense! Now I want to reintroduce them after Chosen! Free-for-all week, here I come!

Excellent story. You've made Robin Wood a really tragic character.

And - your notes are very educational to me. So, double thanks for a great story and for interesting facts.

He's pretty isolated, when I think about it. Still, he's young enough that there's still plenty of life left for him to live, and with all those slayers surrounding him, he's bound to find love and meaningful work. Don't be sad, he'll be okay.;-)

Footnotes: can't live without 'em. I'm relieved you don't find them boring.

This is excellent.

I'm so happy you like it so emphatically! *preens* Thanks, sweetie!

This was a great story! I like how Robin is determined to fight the things you can't really fight, the demons you can't kill and uses the demonic slayage as an outlet. It's amazing how he took his mother's motto ("It was the mission that mattered") and turned it into something he could apply in 'real life'.

Thanks, sweetie! I'm so happy you like it. I like the demony badness as much as the next person, but some of the horrible stuff that goes on between humans is truly terrifying. I have a lot of admiration for the folks that fight those fights.

(I see we are chasing each other through the archives for last minute voting. Tsk. I'm such a procrastinator.)

In my opinion it's always worse when it's humans who cause the horribleness. Demons don't really have a choice, while humans...

(I'm usually better on time, but school got in the way this month... Or at least, that's what I'm telling myself ;)

Is it okay if I friend you? I really like your stuff!

This is embarrassing! My LJ notifications are dreadfully erratic, and I missed this! I would welcome your friendship!

Excellent. How much better Wood's story would have played out with some backstory like this. On screen, I really didn't care too much about him. Something like this would have helped immensely. Instead we got the "is he evil" game. And trying to kill Spike.

Love the Gunn connection.

Yeah, we got the Wood story from Buffy's perspective, just as we get his mom's story from Spike's perspective. The story from their own viewpoint would have been much more interesting. In a way, I think that this story makes Wood's involvement with the living Slayer tragic for him. He had made a place for himself, made a difference, and by putting himself in her orbit, he regresses to that angry young man of which he was so contemptuous. He thought it would be easy, but it tested the parts of him that were most raw. That he was an antagonist to our poor woobie (Spike) didn't endear him to the fans, either. I like to think that he once again becomes all that he can be, though.

I really want him to meet up with Gunn post Chosen! Without this background I would worry that it was too much "yeah, right, all black people know each other". But I'll bet they'd be relieved to have somebody from the old days in the demon hunter club.

Thaks for your nice comments!

Yeah not only did Wood try to kill Spike but he helped Buffy break his little heart first! Ouch. He never won me over after that. But this kind of thing helps.

But I've always had a soft spot for Gunn. Those guys who fight without superpowers, those guys are admirable to me. Gunn is like Batman, without the money. I guess the same could be said about Wood, except we got too little too late of the positives for him.

This was excellent.
I really enjoyed your insights into the education system and the parallels between poverty, violence, drugs, and monsters.

I'm glad you liked it! All those things the monsters were metaphors for on BtVS have even worse real life equivalents. I started from the essential truth that Robin was not a coward and tried to figure out how he got from that cute little 4-yr-old in 1977 to Sunnydale. Now, of course, it's my own personal canon.

Thanks so much for commenting!

Heartbreaking. Love the last line. So glad I read this second, since I know he has a reunion with Gunn. Poor Alona, though. *sniffle*

(I gotta say, if Robin Wood was coaching basketball at my school I might have taken an interest in sports! DAYUM.)

This struck a chord with me in so many ways. Seems like California isn't that different from Ohio.

I gotta say, if Robin Wood was coaching basketball at my school I might have taken an interest in sports! DAYUM.

Oh yeah. At least as a spectator...

The American educational system is a weird patchwork, but urban districts all have a lot of the same problems, and perhaps the biggest problem of all is that schools are expected to somehow solve all of society's other problems, but are not funded to do so. Oh! Look! Where did that soapbox come from?

Thanks for commenting, sweetie!

I agree - this Robin should have stayed away from Sunnydale and continued fighting evil where he was. Great little backstory piece. I really enjoyed it. :)

Hee! Just saw that I commented on this two years ago when you first posted it. And I still like it!

Edited 2012-09-06 00:36 (UTC)

Like I'd ever be unhappy to get feedback! That'll be the day!

I'm glad you liked it, sweetie. Thanks again for letting me know!

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164 Fic: The Front Lines

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