"Cute tricks," said Willow.
"You're really asking for it, you know that?" he panted. It probably wasn't the thing to say in this situation, but he felt the words bubbling up from inside him and spilling out of his mouth regardless. He heard the woman in front of him say something, but couldn't hear her, couldn't hear anything except his own words and frantically buzzing thoughts. "I'm gonna walk away from this. And when I do, you're gonna beg to go join your little girlfriend."
Through his bravado, Warren saw Willow frown in understanding, and felt a little part of himself drop away.
"She wasn't your first," stated Willow.
"Uh, first who?"
"Tara. She wasn't the first girl you killed."
No. She couldn't know. The psycho, dark-magic mighty girl in front of him couldn't know that, couldn't know what had happened in that basement that day-
"Reveal!"
Yes, she could.
"I should have strangled you in your sleep." And she was pale, and almost as beautiful as she'd been in life. Just another girl. Just a girl he'd loved, way back when, before deciding that girls couldn't love back, so what was the point? "Back when we shared a bed. I should have done the world a favour."
He squirmed, giggled nervously, would've rubbed the back of his neck if his hands had been free. "It's a trick."
"Why, Warren? You could have just let me go."
Make it shut up. Make it go away. He didn't realise that he'd said it out loud until he saw Willow shake her head, calmly.
"It didn't have be like that. How could you say you loved me, and do that to me?"
"Because you deserved it, bitch!" he shouted, twisting in his bounds against all better instinct to see the woman, the bitch who-
-who wasn't there.
"Because you liked it," said Willow, but now Warren was mad, really mad, not to mention terrified.
"Oh, shut up! Women. You know, you're just like the rest of them. Mind games." And there was silence, and oh god, oh god, that wasn't the thing to say, oh god.
And then there was a bullet, and it was against his skin and ohgod and pain…
Willow was talking, but Warren couldn't hear her, wrapped in a world of his agony.
"The dying? It'll seem like it takes forever…"
He could only hear every other word, everything centred around the pain in his chest.
"…feel it?"
And he could speak again, scream again, and he was begging and pleading and threatening and begging some more, and…
"Bored now."
And, with a casual gesture from Willow, the blinding pain went black.
Black. It was all black. There was no pain, just a definite sense that pain had happened. Warren found that he was trembling. He put a hand out to steady himself, but found nothing on which to do so. No light. He couldn't see his feet, couldn't see his hand, couldn't see his finger even when he poked himself in the eye.
"Where am I?"
"Where do you think you are?"
"What?" The voice seemed to come from directly above him; Warren looked upwards before realising that, with the current dark issue, it probably wouldn't help matters. Anyway, it didn't sound overtly dangerous, or threatening. It was male, and not particularly deep; it actually sounded a bit like Jonathan when he'd had one too many root beers.
"Uh," he chuckled, nervously, "Who are you?"
"Where do you think you are?"
"Okay, quit it with the repetition, dude, I get it. Uh…" Warren turned around, blindly. "I don't know, why do you think I was asking? Some… dark place?" He chuckled, a little more confident-sounding. "Last thing I remember, some psycho-dyke witch was turning my insides into my outsides."
"That's right."
"That's- what, you mean I died?"
"That's right."
"Oh." He took a few trial paces forwards, expecting to run into a wall of some sort, but didn't meet one. "What happens now, then?"
"What do you think happens now?"
"Oh, come on. Quit it! Anyway, you're kidding me. There's no way I died."
"Really?"
"Cute tricks," said Willow.
What? thought Warren. But he didn't hear the words outside his own head. His mouth was forming other ones.
"You're really asking for it, you know that?" his mouth said, without his mind's permission.
No, excuse me, what in hell's name is going on here, bitch?
He didn't say it.
"I'm gonna walk away from this. And when I do, you're gonna beg to go join your little girlfriend."
This has happened before.
And there was Katrina, just as she had appeared before, and as Warren's body snarled at Willow, he tried to crane his neck to look at her ghost. His body wouldn't let him.
"Because you deserved it, bitch!" his body shouted, and Warren twisted in his bonds against all his mind's instincts to look at a ghost who he knew wouldn't be there.
"I think you need to," said Willow, just as she had done before, while Warren's mind filled with terror. "Feel it."
And then there was pain again, and although Warren couldn't control his body he could feel it being torn into just the same, and-
"Bored now,"
-and he died. Again.
The darkness. Again.
Warren put his arms around his torso – at least there wasn't any blood, organs, muscles and arteries exposed in ways they never should have been – and found that he was shaking.
"Okay," he said, when it stopped, "What just happened? And don't even give me that "what do you think just happened" crap, you dickwad!"
There was silence, and Warren sighed, accepting the question that he knew the silence asked.
"Some… some sort of time warp? A demon!"
"You still don't understand."
"What is there to understand?" Warren screamed, but even as he did so the darkness around him stretched and broke, and-
"Cute tricks," said Willow, and Warren tried to scream with frustration, but, unsurprisingly, found that he couldn't.
He looked at Willow through his body's eyes, looked at Katrina as she appeared, before his body turned his head away. He listened to his shouts of denial, knowing exactly what he was going to say next, becoming increasingly disgusted with himself: why didn't he try to work free, or anything?
And Willow took out the bullet, and he held his breath internally, waiting for what he knew was coming although his body stayed in denial, waiting for the piercing of the metal-
And then there was pain.
"Stop it," he said, and he could feel tears of pain and rage rolling down his cheeks in the darkness, "Just stop it."
Silence.
"What do you want?" He began to pace. "What the hell do you want me to say? Or think? I sure as hell can't do anything for you, because, oh yeah, because I'm stuck inside my mind each time while a witch peels my outsides off!"Silence.
"I'll get out of this, you know. Like James Bond, or- I'll get out of this, and then I'll get you."
Silence.
"I'll do anything!" he half shouted, half sobbed, "Anything if you'll just stop this!"
"But what is it you want me to stop?"
"The repeating- aaargh!"
The universe broke around him.
"Cute tricks," said Willow.
"She's killing me," he said, in the darkness. His voice shook, but not in anger. "She's killing me, over and over. I'm dead, but," he laughed, a little hysterically, "She won't stop killing me."
"That's right."
"I'm dead."
"You're dead."
Now it was with grimy hope that his voice spoke. "Does that mean that this is over? I mean, I've got it, I'm over the whole denial thing, I understand it, I'm gone."
"No. For you this will never be over. This is your punishment."
"Wha- but what did I do to deserve this?" shouted Warren.
"What do you think you did?"
Warren's only answer to the voice was an inarticulate grunt of rage.
"Don't worry," it said, and now there was something of a smirk about it. "You'll work it out, sometime in the next eternity.
And around Warren, the darkness broke.