Title: Voodoo Haze
Author: iridescentZEN
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG13 Pairing: Willow/Rack
Spoils: Wrecked
varietypack100 prompt: 025 Strangers
Don't talk to strangers.
It was the cardinal rule held above all others during childhood.
No helping to find someone's lost puppy.
McGruff, the fighting crime dog was in Willow's head. Complete with his trench coat and everything, warning her of the same things her parents had ingrained in her as a child, except it was from McGruff, and he was totally cool and not her parents.
Listen to the fighting crime dog, she thought. Amy's spinning was making her sick, and Willow didn't dare touch the dripping fluid from her nose, certain her fingertips would come back red with blood and give her sick magically induced thoughts on Smokey The Bear, and how she could prevent a forest fire.
Though everyone knew that most forest fires started from lazy campers or people that liked to throw their still lit cigarettes out of their car window because the earth was their ashtray and reaching for the one in the dash was too much work.
In a way, maybe she had some of that in common with inconsiderate smokers. After all, she did like to abuse the magic in absurd ways. She used it so she didn't have to take a shower. That was pretty lazy. But she wasn't starting any forest fires.
Nothing was burning there.
Except need.
Vacuous, unsatisfied, overwhelming need.
There was someone out there with a hole in their throat lighting a cigarette and puffing away through it, even though they know all the pain smoking had caused them already. Knowing that it wasn't called cancer stick just for fun. They can't stop, can't stop until their heart stops because that was addiction.
Black tar heroin.
Opium from the land of the rising sun.
Glittery white rocks that weighed less than paper, that could be smoked to death with a smile.
They had nothing on magic.
Rack showed her. Showed her the demon dragging the girl, and everything had been good up until that mind-blowing fear, and the magic sustaining her stalled and had her plummeting to the floor.
Willow was in a dozen different places at once, and could not differentiate what was real and what wasn't. "Amy?" she sobbed, feeling like a lost child in a mirror maze, trying to find the way out but only managing to bump into her own reflection.
Dead weight limbs, like a mass of seaweed tangled around her legs that she couldn't break free of. Magic was the salt of the earth, and it burned inside her, acutely painful. The Magic Shop, The Bronze, High School, the Sun Cinema. She was at all those places at once, and Amy was hiding, no where to be seen.
Was she still spinning?
Why was it so cold?
The chill inside her was colder than the arctic, numbing her with its promise of hypothermia.
If she closed her eyes even for a second - she was dead.
Rack was all around. Walking around with her feet, her hands, the ultimate puppet master. He spoke with her voice, saw with her eyes, and most of all he enjoyed the thrill of her fear that came with not being in control of her own body. Of coming in second to yourself.
There were flashes of what she thought was going on, but she wasn't sure. She was on a roller coaster and couldn't stop the ride. all she could do was close her eyes and pray that it was over soon, that the ride would stop and things would be blessedly still and silent.
Oh god, she chanted to herself. Oh god, oh god, oh god. What was she doing? Why couldn't she stop? She wanted nothing of his touch if his fingers didn't spark with magic, she certainly didn't intend to kiss him. So why wasn't she stopping?
Why was she moaning ... and .hell. was Amy?
The demon was there again, dragging the body of a nude woman through the most beautiful garden Willow had ever seen. She saw Rack's eyes flash red, and she arched up as far away from him as she possibly could while still being jolted with his powerful drug, but he was stronger. His magic was older and much more potent than she thought possible.
There was no way to break free from his voodoo haze.
That was where the danger was.
Suddenly, she thought, if it was dangerous it should stop you, because the stuff that she was exposing herself to her stank of desperation, and she never ever wanted to be that type of girl.
Just a little tour, Rack said the first time he made her entire body tingle. What was he doing this time ... booking a room for a two week stay?
"You're a stranger," Willow said to Rack in his head or hers, she wasn't sure. "I don't know you. This isn't right. I don't know you."
He. Is. Not. My. Daddy!
Yeah, like that ever worked.
"Yes, you do," Rack's voice was a mixture of his and hers, slightly distorted. It sounded evil. He ... she ... they sounded evil. "Look what you see in the mirror of your soul, Sweetness."
She looked.
She saw him.
She saw herself.
Willow blinked back tears when she realized that Rack was right. He wasn't a stranger at all.
End.