Disclaimer: Buffy-The Vampire Slayer and all related characters are the property of Mutant Enemy Productions, Inc., Sandollar Television, Kuzui Enterprises and Twentieth Century-Fox Television. No copyright infringement is intended. This work of fiction is for entertainment purposes only and no money has changed hands. The story and all original characters are the sole property of the author and may not be used or archived without permission.
Author's Note: This is a full-length Anya-saga, so get comfortable and keep your eyes glued to the screen at all times. It's a little more mature than my other Anya fics so kiddies are not allowed. The rating is for Nudity, Graphic Violence, Strong Language and Sexual Situations, and the following categories apply: some AU (something I usually try to avoid, but I couldn't help it in this case), Anya POV (naturally) and HEAVY SLASH (it is in caps so that those who are offended by such things may run screaming now). R&R, good bad or indifferent.
'Witching Anya
by Darrin A. Colbourne
I pace up and down in Buffy's living room, trying to occupy my mind with taking inventory of the furniture and knick-knacks in it, categorizing each object as pretty, or tacky, or bulky, or whatever adjective comes to mind at the time. I'm not really paying attention. It's an exercise in denial. I'm trying hard not to picture My Xander, Buffy, Willow and Tara lying in massive pools of blood on Sunnydale's streets, ripped to shreds by the hellhounds of the latest "Big Bad". Dawn is pacing around with me, and while I can't read her thoughts I assume that she's worried about the same thing. As we wait for word on their latest brush with the Forces of Darkness, and I contemplate the Hell on Earth that our little town has become, one thought keeps coming to my mind unbidden:
This week really sucked!
It started out so well. Willow and Tara are back together...well, almost. Tara was especially moved by the fact that Willow had given up Magic completely, and came back into her life to help her stay on the straight and narrow. Buffy made a better first impression on the new Social Worker that came by (You know, to replace the one that Buffy drove insane when she was turned invisible), and it looks like the State won't be taking Dawn any time soon. Best of all, I started trying on weddings dresses, beautiful frilly ones with long trains and lace veils. Xander says I look beautiful in all of them, but I'm not really sure if he means it or if he's just being polite and hoping I like the cheapest one enough to pick it. (It doesn't matter either way. I like hearing him tell me I'm beautiful no matter what the circumstances.)
Then, out of nowhere the town was invaded by the biggest, meanest pack of wolves I've ever laid eyes on! Hundreds of them tore through Sunnydale, chasing down and mauling innocent people, sometimes chasing them into buildings and cars to get to them. Then this army of witches showed up! They were all decked out in Yves Saint Lauren and Donna Karan suits and went through the town using magic to wreak havoc according to gender. They killed the men, either by dissolving them in acid, making them spontaneously combust, trapping them with a dozen wolves or any number of hideous methods. There was an all-boys prep school on the outskirts of Sunnydale Heights. There's nothing but a big hole on the site now.
They tried to recruit the women in town, and tortured any women who refused to convert with their worst nightmares. They tried to get Buffy, Willow and Me to join when they caught us all together in the Magic Box, and we barely got out with our lives. You don't know what terror is until you've been trapped in a little shop with hordes of bunnies, unkillable vampires and Harmony clones.
We've spent the last three days holed up in Buffy's house, venturing out in pairs with the Slayer to survey the damage and try to make some headway against the hordes. Buffy came back without Spike last night. They were ambushed by several witches. She said they didn't kill Spike but they took him away, then beat her back when she tried to follow. Tonight, Buffy and the others left to carry out a desperate plan. They were going to use Tara's magic to try and find the source of the invasion, the portal or demon or whatever, and destroy it, or send it back where it came from, and hopefully that would put everything back to normal...or at least give us a fighting chance to stop the bad guys (girls?) by cutting off their source of power. They left Dawn behind because it was too dangerous a mission for her, and they left me to watch her. (Okay, I admit it. In a situation like this I'm about as useless as the girl, but I appreciate them telling me that I was only staying behind to watch her.)
We stop pacing when we hear someone screaming as they get closer to the house. The person is saying something but we can't make out the words. We do, however, recognize the voice.
"It's Buffy!" Dawn says. We rush to the front window and look out. Buffy is leading Willow, Xander and Tara down the street, and they're being pursued by a howling, growling pack of wolves that covers the entire road from sidewalk to sidewalk. Buffy's leading the entire procession right to her front walk as she yells again.
"What's she saying?" I ask.
"Something about the door..." Dawn says, just as the Slayer gets closer and we can hear it clearly:
"DAWN!! ANYA!! OPEN THE DOOOOR!!!!"
I blanche as I rush to the door to open it! I barely get through the locks and get the doorknob turned when I feel a push from the other side. Buffy practically falls in. "IN! IN! IN!" She screams as the others follow, then she slams the door shut before I can even let go of the knob! Then she screams "SEAL THE HOUSE!!" Tara gestures with her hand, and a second later we hear several thuds as the wolves attempt to smash their way in! The thudding continues after we collect ourselves and get away from the doors and windows.
Buffy and the others are panting with exhaustion. I rush to support Xander and rest him on the couch, while Dawn takes Buffy to a soft chair to catch her breath. Tara collapses in another chair, while Willow drops to the floor by Tara's feet. When everyone is still I take a close look at them all. They're all cut and bruised, their clothing is slashed and burned. Each of them is bloodied in one way or another, and little moans of pain find their way out amid gasps for air.
Sitting next to my future husband, taking in the ragged warriors before me, I try hard to find a tactful way to voice what I'm thinking at this moment. I finally settle on a question.
"So...is it safe to assume we need a 'Plan B'?"
Xander catches enough of his breath to answer me. "Oh, no....my...Goddess of Understatement. We...are...beyond 'Plan B'! We are so far beyond 'Plan B' that the light from 'Plan B' will take a thousand years to reach us! We need a 'Plan X', or a 'Plan Y'. 'Plan Z' will involve cyanide capsules. "
I smile a little. It's the most sarcastic he's been for two days, which means he must be starting to feel better.
"I admit," Buffy says, "that that was not one of our finer moments in fighting Evil."
"What happened?" Dawn asks.
"We made it to the high school." Buffy says. Yesterday afternoon, Tara had managed to use some scrying spells to narrow down the source of the invasion to Sunnydale High. "It was almost too easy. We managed to sneak past the dogs and the patrols and get inside."
"It was a trap." Tara says. "We were ambushed in the gymnasium by wolves and ten witches. The witches tried to burn us while the dogs attacked. I'm surprised we made it out. I didn't have a chance to do anything with magicks besides keep us all from combusting."
"There's no doubt they expected us to find them." Willow says. "And this time they didn't concentrate everything they had on killing Xander."
"Yes," Xander says. "It was a real Equal Opportunity lynching."
"So there's nothing we can do?" Dawn says.
"I don't see what options we have." Willow says. "All that research we did and nothing covers this situation. It's like there's a brand new demon out there that's showing off, trying to prove how out of our league we are."
I let my gaze wander as I recall the one clue we had. Buffy tore a pendant off a witch she was fighting a few days ago. The charm was a small tree with a pentagram superimposed on it. We'd spent the day we were in the shop trying to find the symbol in the books and on the 'net, but without any luck.
"Well...surely it's not completely hopeless." I say to Buffy. "I mean, we've been through worse scrapes and come out all right."
"Really?" Buffy says with a chuckle. "Name one."
"Well, gee, just off the top of my head, there was that time you dove into the portal to Hell and died, the portal that opened up when some guy stabbed your sister in the gut and she bled off a rickety tower. You two are still here, right?"
"Tactful as ever, honey." Xander whispers to me as Buffy and Dawn stare.
"Okay, for the record..." Dawn says, "...that's not an experience I want to relive."
"Ditto." Buffy says. "But in your own twisted way you're right, Anya. This is really only a new situation because we don't have history and research to fall back on. If--When we get out of this, we'll need to do it by coming up with our own solution."
"We won't be able to do anything trapped in here." Tara says. "If we don't come up with a way to stop...wait a second. Listen..."
The room falls silent as we all listen carefully. "I don't hear anything," I say.
"I think that's the point, sweetie." Xander says. "The Hundred-and-One Attack Dogs out there have stopped trying to pound their way in." Since we're the closest, Xander and I move to the window and peep out through the curtains and blinds. Most of the wolves that followed them home are gone, but about three dozen are on the front lawn, sitting in perfect rows and watching the house as if they expect it to grow legs and run away. Surrounding them are about two dozen well-dressed witches, wearing dark pantsuits and black sunglasses (At night? How Eighties.) and silently chanting in the direction of the house. Suddenly the air outside shimmers with gold light, coinciding with a gasp from Tara. The effect is brief, but I've been around sorcery and magic long enough to realize our time is running out.
"They're trying to break the barrier!" Tara says. "Buffy, they can counter anything I can throw at them! It won't hold for long!"
Buffy stands up and looks hard at the door. "Can you transport us somewhere?"
"Not all at once, and not all that far. I don't have much of a knack for it, and I doubt we could find a place to go where they couldn't track us. We'd have to keep moving constantly..."
"Or we can make our stand here. I've tried running. It doesn't work. Xander, help me get some things from upstairs."
With that everyone gets up and Xander follows Buffy upstairs. Tara gasps in surprise again as her barrier shimmers. When the assault subsides, she closes her eyes and begins chanting herself, trying to reinforce the seal.
Willow just stands there watching her girlfriend and biting her nails. To her credit, she's not offering to help, or create a stronger barrier or do anything else magical. I can see it in her eyes and body language, though. The abstinence is hard on her, especially in times of mortal peril like this.
That may be something to consider. Maybe something needs to be said. I'm sure it's crossed everyone's mind at one point since this mess started, but they'll leave it to me to say, so they can act all shocked and insulted and take everything out on Li'l Old Anya. That might force me to keep my mouth shut--I am actually capable of holding my tongue on occasion--but this is different. I don't want any of us to die.
Soon Buffy and Xander are back downstairs with a bunch of weapons in their hands. Xander hands a Kendo stick to Willow and a sai to Tara while he keeps a big club. Buffy hands a large dagger to her sister and then comes over to me.
I speak to her quietly as I take a mace from her. "Buffy...this may not be something you want to hear, but...maybe, just maybe, we should let Willow use her magic to get us out of this."
I wasn't as quiet as I hoped. Everyone turns to look at me, just as I expected. I even brought Tara out of her trance. "It's not that you haven't done a great job so far," I say to her, "but we need all the offensive power we can get right now, and Willow has always been more...aggressive. She may be able to tip the scales a little further in our favor if we let her cut loose."
To my surprise, I don't receive any scolds or caustic comments. Instead, everyone turns to look at Willow when I finish. She looks around at everyone else for a moment or two, then stares at her feet as she answers. "No. I'm sorry, Anya. I can't." Then she looks up at me. "I don't need to. Tara is strong enough. She can get us through this just as well as I can."
She's smiling as she tries to comfort me, and so is Buffy when she adds: "We'll do fine without Willow's magic. All of us. It's like you said. We've been through worse, and we didn't always have witchcraft to help."
I smile back and nod and the discussion ends there, but I'm still not convinced. Despite all her gaffes when going overboard with witchcraft, it was always nice to know that there was at least one member of our little group besides Buffy that could stand toe-to-toe with a bad guy and actually give as good as she got. Yes, Tara is powerful in her own right, but she's...well, passive. She doesn't have the competitive instinct to go with the ability that would make her a serious threat.
"AAHH!" Tara wails as what I feared happens. Someone more competitive just put her in her place. Willow rushes over to support her. "The barrier's down!" Tara says. "It's like somebody just walked up and turned it off." She looks confused as she gets back on her feet, then a look of terror shows on her face. "Whoever we're facing," she whispers, "is on her way in. I've never sensed this kind of power."
Buffy swings her broadsword as she approaches the door, we all gather behind her, gripping our weapons a little tighter. I hold my mace like a baseball bat, ready to send the Big Bad's head right out of the park.
The door opens on its own. It swings in gently before the invader even gets to the bottom step. She's walking up the walk slowly, casually, decked out in a suit and sunglasses of her own and wearing a dark, broad-rimmed hat as well. Beyond her we can see that her minions parted the way for her entrance. There's a limousine parked out front, with the rear door opened right in front of the walk.
She takes her hat off at the top step, letting her long hair fall and settle. I barely have a moment to register it's color in the light of the porchlight when an unseen force yanks the weapons from our hands and sticks them to the ceiling.
She's in the door when we tear our gaze from the ceiling, standing three feet away from Buffy. She tosses her hat nonchalantly to the couch, and as she moves the light glints off her red-tinted hair. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I note the small, perky smile on her red-coated lips, and all our jaws drop when she takes off her sunglasses, revealing her bright green eyes and showing us the unmasked face of our latest archenemy.
It's...Willow.
"Hi, Gang." She says. "Let's talk."
TBC...