Tribulations - Ch. 34

All the time he'd been stumbling over the twisty Latin words in the big dusty book Willow'd shoved into his hands, Xander repeated a completely different prayer inside his head. His own private chant went something like this: Please make her stop. Please make her stop. Let her see how nuts this is.

Willow didn't stop, though. She didn't explain anything, she didn't seem to see her behavior as crazy, and her expression went so far beyond her really-kind-of-cute Resolve Face that Xander figured he'd have to call this new look Fanatic Face. That's what it reminded him of, anyway: the guys in the movies with the big guns, or with dynamite duct-taped around their chests.

His throat felt dry and scratchy, but Xander didn't really think that came from the burning bundle of sage in his hand--even though the word "pungent" didn't begin to describe how it smelled. The odor was like the one he'd always imagined went along with an out-of-control prairie fire, the kind he'd watched in millions of old Westerns on Late Nite TV: a dusty, harsh, sour-grass-and-half-petrified-twig kind of stink that coated his sinuses and stuck in the back of his mouth, until it felt like he'd have to drink a whole 12-pack worth of Cokes to make it go away again, with maybe a gallon of Gatorade for a chaser.

Willow didn't seem to notice any of this, any more than she recognized what Xander felt fairly sure must be his more-than-obvious reluctance. Her voice just kept chanting, something about Spirits of the Interregnum, whatever they were--and that was before her eyes went wide and black all across, and her voice got all big and scary, too big, really, to be coming from Willow's little body. Her head jerked back, her skin went white, and all of a sudden the foreign voice wasn't even speaking English any more.

The book dropped out of Xander's hands, heavy enough to hurt as it hit his shoe, but he hardly even noticed the pain. All he could do was stare at his oldest friend, wondering if any Willow--any real Willow, at least--could possibly be left inside. Blue and red lights crackled through Willow's hair and out of her fingertips. Her mouth stretched open as far as it possibly could to shout out the weird foreign words. Xander himself started to shiver uncontrollably as the crystal ball began to glow. Next thing he knew, all the panes blew out of the Rosenberg's front windows, while their curtains flapped with a sound like giant crazed bat-wings.

Willow hit the carpet, scattering rocks and bones, overturning the bowl of water so that the still-glowy ball spilled out and rolled across the rug until it bumped to a stop against Xander's left shoe. Still shivering, Xander decided he hated magic. Probably hated it even more than he hated his dad--though he'd have to say that one was a pretty close call.

He didn't hate Willow though. He'd always loved Willow. Always. And he'd love her even when she freaked him out, or if his own Willow was gone away for good. Xander couldn't help himself: he had no choice in the matter.

"Will? Willow?" Xander found himself kneeling, one hand scooped beneath Willow's head, trying to hold it out of the puddle. His friend's skin felt cold, like something just out of the fridge, and her face had taken on a kind of Swiss-cheesy color. Willow's eyes had rolled back, too, showing whites only, and holding her was harder than it sounded, because Willow's body had started to jerk in hard spasms that made her joints pop with a sound like Orville Redenbacher's in a microwave--which would have been funny if it wasn't so completely horrifying.

In the end, Xander lay down on the carpet next to her and wrapped his arms around her body, trying to hold Willow close enough that she wouldn't hurt herself. More than she had already, that was.

The convulsions seemed to go on forever. Xander knew that the smart thing would be to call 911. That's what you were supposed to do, right? Only what would EMT's and doctors know about something like this?

By the time the spasms finally stopped, hours or minutes later, Xander's brain had gone completely into overload. Willow's breathing was all wrong, that much he knew, and getting her to Sunnydale General might not be such a bad idea after all, but when he'd hoisted her up in his arms, run down the front drive and thrown her into his car, Xander realized that, good idea or bad, they wouldn't make it there, mostly because, in his total blind panic, he could no longer remember the way.

Xander stood with one hand on the driver's side door, staring down at Willow's teeny body sprawled over the broad bench seat, and wondered if he even remembered how to drive.

Across the street, some crazy woman started calling his name, waving her arms and yelling, "Xander! Son!" She had to be crazy, Xander knew, because he could have sworn he'd never seen her before, didn't recognize her, yet at the same time, for some weird reason, hearing her voice tore into his heart. He choked back a sob, jumped into his seat and gunned the engine, not looking back, hardly even looking where he was going. Anyone who got in his way had better have a guardian angel working overtime.

Later, after he'd had time to decompress, it struck Xander as a major miracle that no squashing took place during that drive. Maybe some kind of saints, angels, or powers-that-were really did watch over dumb kids who lacked the balls to stop their best friends from trying things that were just--well, just insane. Maybe they even steered him toward the one place where things almost made sense: the pseudo-Spanish brick building where Giles lived.

Willow's body had gone even colder by the time Xander hauled her back up out of the convertible and over his shoulder. She breathed in tiny, scary, shallow gasps. Small as Willow was, it still seemed as if she ought to weigh something, but carrying her was more like carrying a sack of feathers. A little sack, at that.

Giles must have heard Xander's footsteps clattering down the stairs, because he was waiting in the open doorway by the time Xander got to the bottom, looking big and solid and most of all, Giles-like. He took Willow off Xander's shoulder right away, carrying her to the recliner while Xander babbled out a version of what happened that, even to his own ears, sounded like something put together by an insane person with serious memory problems.

Giles must have caught some of it, though, because his eyes got that clouds-reflected-on-ice look. "Xander, sit," he said softly.

Xander dropped down onto the couch as if his legs had been cut off below the knees. He couldn't have done otherwise. He wanted to cry, but sucked it back, humiliated enough for one day.

Celeste scooted from the other end to sit next to him, and patted his hand, but Xander was too far gone to find even her close proximity as distracting as he normally would--in fact, totally unlike his usual self, he hardly noticed her.

Giles went on examining Willow in his typical methodical way, not rushing, saying nothing. After less than a minute of that, Xander wanted to scream at him, "What happened to her? Giles, what in hell are you doing?"

One look at Giles's face, though, made him keep his mouth shut. The others--Buffy, Sebastian and Celeste--seemed to have the same reaction, because although they pulled in closer, nobody said a word.

Finally, Giles straightened, running one hand over his jaw, then back through his hair. He looked worried, but then, when didn't he? He wasn't talking either.

"Giles?" Buffy said finally, in something like her normal voice--serious, but normal. "What's up? Wanna share?" She taken a big, fluffy comforter--one Xander himself had slept under many times--from one of the hall cupboards, and pretty much tiptoed up behind her Watcher.

"It's shock, I think," Giles answered in a gray-sounding voice. He didn't turn around to face Buffy, much less meet her eyes, although he did take the comforter when she passed it to him and tucked the folds in gently around Willow's body.

"Not severe, I don't think," he said after a minute more. "Willow's already beginning to recover, and I imagine she'll be awake soon enough, though perhaps not feeling her best."

"Was...did..." Buffy stepped closer, laying one hand on Giles's arm. "Are we talking vamps here? Blood loss?"

"We're talking too much bloody magic," Giles snapped back, shooting straight into full Watcher-mode, which meant he was even more upset than Xander thought.

Buffy took a step backward. "Sweetie--"

"I've warned her a million times of the consequences." Giles's whole face looked stormy. He didn't lose it too often, but when he did--watch out!

"Dad," Sebastian broke in, raising a hand, like he though that would calm Giles down. Good luck, Xander could have told him, but mostly that was only his own guilt talking, trying to shift the attention, and the blame for acting dumb, onto someone else.

He could have stopped her, right? If he'd really tried?

Yeah, Xander answered his guilty-self, And I can also fly to the moon by flapping my arms.

Giles took a couple deep breaths, some of the storminess leaving him, so that he just looked tired and defeated instead. Xander wasn't quite sure which was worse.

"I know what you believe, son, and what your mother believes...er, believed," Giles said, in a weary version of his usual voice. Still not looking at Buffy, he stooped to rest one palm on Willow's forehead, then brushed a stray strand of hair away from her eyes.

Giles loved Willow, Xander knew that--had probably even loved her longer than he'd loved the rest of them, and with pretty good reason: in a lot of ways, they were kindred spirits, and maybe he and Buffy would never entirely get that. Willow hardly ever got on Giles's nerves, but right now, Xander could tell, he was plenty mad at her--and he probably had his reasons for that, too. Reasons Willow would have understood, as well.

Giles sank down on the edge of the recliner, taking Willow's little hand in his big one. "What your mother believed," he repeated, so quietly Xander could hardly even hear him. "But magic is dangerous, Seb. It's not a toy, or a curiosity. One doesn't meddle with the natural order of things without consequences. Uncontrolled, magic can take too much of one's self away. Far more than one can spare, really."

"Dad," Sebastian said again, louder, in a tone of voice that made Giles straighten up and listen. "Dad, I think you may possibly mean 'believes' after all."

Giles frowned, the three lines coming in between his eyebrows. "I...er...that is." He yet took yet another deep breath and started again. "Sebastian, what is it you're trying to say?"

Seb moved from the barstool where he'd been perching and came to face his father across the recliner. "Look closer at Willow, Dad. Really look. Can't you feel it?"

Giles's jaw actually dropped. He looked nearly as horrified as he had when they'd worked out that Moira was probably dead, and that was just about has horrified as Xander had ever seen him.

His son nodded slowly. "Yes, Dad, you see it now. Whatever young Willow undertook, she wasn't alone, and poor Xander here had very little chance of withstanding her will. It seems obvious to me that Willow was compelled, and furthermore, that whatever force compelled her has LeFaye magic written all over it."

Giles took a few seconds pulling himself back together, but when he turned to Xander his voice was perfectly under control, although with a little of that Giles bite to it. "Xander," he said slowly, "What spell did Willow perform?"

The sun had set again whilst they continued to discuss and argue the merits of one plan then another--all of which swiftly ran aground on the inescapable fact of their captivity. Although Giles had more or less decided that the spell he and Seb puzzled out from half-a-dozen of his most obscure texts would serve to free them, in order to use it they must make use of the gifts of Willow's elusive LeFaye blood, and there the frail craft of their intention was dashed once more upon the rocks: Willow, for the foreseeable future, would be in no shape to perform further magics.

Giles wanted badly to be angry with her, to blame her. While she slept he'd worked himself nearly into a state of fury. Would she never listen to him? Did she believe his experience and his learning meant nothing?

When Willow finally awakened, though, she'd been so contrite, so confused, and so physically miserable that Giles hadn't the heart to say so much as a harsh word to her. She hadn't even been entirely clear as to why she'd attempted an encore of Jenny's soul-restoration spell--or curse, as the case might be. As for who'd put the idea into her head--when he mentioned Moira's name, Willow only fell to weeping, her grief so bitter and unfeigned that Giles could only sit beside her and murmur meaningless, soothing nothings, patting her shoulder awkwardly in a vain attempt to restore her to some semblance of calm.

Finally, Celeste and Buffy had stepped in, spiriting the still-weeping Willow upstairs as Giles, Seb and Xander regarded each other with bleak faces.

"Don't start with me," Xander muttered, when Giles opened his mouth to speak.

Sebastian gave him a look of sympathy, but merely shook his head.

In the loft, the women's voices rose and fell: Willow's tearful, Celeste's calm and practical, Buffy's alternately angry and sympathetic. Try as he might, Giles could make out no actual words, especially once Xander turned on the television and began a seemingly random ramble from channel to channel, rarely lighting on one for more than a few seconds at a time.

"Xander, please," Giles sighed at last in exasperation. How much banality must one be forced to endure, especially in light of...?

A brief image caught his attention.

"Xander, turn back," Giles said with some urgency. Obligingly, the boy returned to a previous station, and a series of gristly pictures flickered across the screen. Giles recognized the background clearly enough: the cheerless corridors of Sunnydale General. Even the newscaster's normally ebullient tones were subdued as he described the slaughter that had taken place on the hospital's seventh floor. On camera, a second interviewer thrust her microphone into the face of a haggard-looking Joyce Summers. Indeed, Joyce appeared nearly as shocked as Willow as she described--obviously omitting myriad details from the account--her own attack and the subsequent abduction of one young friend, the disappearance of another.

Willow had been there, on the seventh floor. Willow had witnessed, or at least been close to these events, and subsequently performed, without question, a rite that she never ought to have attempted, depleted as she was from the warding of his flat.

The pieces fell into place in Giles's mind, neatly as tumblers tripping in a picked lock. Without thinking, he caught up a jacket and his keys, and was out the back door before Xander and Sebastian could so much as react.

Once he came back to himself, it all hurt so dreadfully that conscious thought and coherent speech were not possible. He could only kneel on the splintery uneven boards and moan out his misery to the uncaring world.

"Yeah, yeah, 'what fresh hell is this?'" a voice drawled behind him, young and bored, with a regional American accent that he couldn't quite place. A booted foot connected with his backside, shoving him until he sprawled face-down on the pier, slime and fish scales coating his hands, filming his cheek whilst the sickening reek rose around him and the unpleasant young person laughed at his distress.

The voice was not Faith's, he knew that well enough, and yet it reminded him of Faith's with its mockery, its casual cruelty.

"Eh. What's up with him?" rang out Maria del Ciello's voice, and with it came the hiss of a match, followed by the stench of one of her malodourous Camels.

"Dunno," responded the first young woman. "One minute he was all, 'Here am I, Count Dracula, fall down and fear my sexy, evil self,' the next thing I knew it was tantrum time at Romper Room."

"Hmn. Good one, Mel." Maria laughed, then sang out, "Wes-leeey. Oh, Wes-ley," in her unpleasant twang. "What's up with you, fearless leader?"

The pain--and it had been a real, physical pain, as agonizing as any Wesley ever felt--ebbed a little. He managed to roll over, further besmirching what appeared to be a rather nice suit, then sit up, gazing speechless at his two tormentors.

"Hey, Lisa," Maria called to someone over her shoulder. "Wanna come see the show?"

A third young woman, as blonde as the first woman was red-haired, and as Maria was dark, joined her fellows.

"What's wrong with him?" this newcomer asked, baby-voiced, her eyes round and blue as marbles. "He looks really...uh...different."

"Yup, that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, Wes." Maria took a long drag on her cigarette. "Care to enlighten the little lady?"

"Maybe it's just another one of his head-games," the red-haired girl opined. "Might could be he's testing our loyalty. Or something." She gazed at him with cool green eyes, and Wesley fought the impulse to squirm away from her regard.

He'd a dream, an inkling...something...that he'd performed a terrible act against this girl. Tht he'd done to her something cowardly and wretched and WRONG, but his memory seemed dreadfully faulty, and he could not begin to wrap his thoughts around why he felt so certain of his guilt. Or why he was so hungry. Or, more than that, why he felt so cold.

And yet Wesley knew, when the truth did come to him, finally and suddenly, like a bolt of lightning from the gods, that he was quite sure to start screaming again.