Chapter 6

Seeing fit

Willow fairly flew down the stairs in her haste, and so nearly ran into a bleary-eyed Constantine. "What?" he demanded, then he took a better look at her face, "Calm down, luv. What's wrong?"

She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her up the staircase, and into her room. Footsteps behind her informed her that Buffy and Dawn had showed up as well. "Will?" Buffy asked anxiously.

Willow pointed wordlessly at the bed, and the roses, dark, rich spots of color on white sheets. Constantine sauntered up to it and glanced at the card, then picked it up carefully, holding the edges. He turned it over, frowned at the blank side, then looked at the dragon again. Buffy and Dawn joined him, nearly stepping over each other in their haste to look.

"So," he said finally, when the girls had finished. "What's wrong?"

"I didn't put them there," Willow bit her lip.

"If you didn't change the clause on your wards, luv, it wouldn't have disallowed this," Constantine pointed out. "Dark elf magic."

"You think it was the elf?" Buffy asked, all business now.

"Unless Red here – " Willow had confided with Constantine her favorite nickname, "has admirers also versed in magic who sign off with a picture that looks like the friggin' elf's staff with amendments."

"I don't have any other admirers," Willow said, then frowned. "Any admirers at all! Aphrodite said it wasn't a love spell!"

"It wasn't a love spell," Constantine understood the Goddess' logic now. "It was a translation spell wot had bleedin' side effects, I reckon."

"Oh." Willow looked stunned, then her face crumpled and she began to sob again.

"Downstairs, hot chocolate," Constantine told the Summers sisters, and they nodded to him, ushering Willow out of the room and making comforting noises. When they were gone, Constantine walked around the room carefully, then looked outside just to make sure. No dark elves that he could see. He sent an invitation to another place with his mind.

Black smoke formed at the foot of Willow's bed, which coalesced quickly into the black panther. It looked at him inquiringly.

"Just so I'd know – any dark elf been in this room lately?"

The panther sniffed, then padded around the room, and then shook its large head. It put two paws on Willow's bed, then patted the roses gingerly.

"Yeah, I know they're roses… eh, you mean a dark elf touched it recently?" The panther nodded. "Ah… thanks luv." The panther purred, padded up to him and rubbed against his knees with affection, then disappeared into smoke.

"Friggin' elves," Constantine muttered, and walked out of the room, unaware that he was being watched. Invisible, the Wizard's Eye followed him down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he sat down on his sofa (he thought of it as his now, for some reason). Willow looked a lot calmer now and she smiled sheepishly at him.

"Sorry for waking you up."

"S'okay." Constantine rubbed his eyes. "I had a bit of help just now, found that there hasn't been any elf in your room, but a dark elf has handled the roses."

"So they're from him," Buffy said softly.

Willow smiled hesitantly. "Suddenly I feel like baking chocolate chip cookies." At Constantine's questioning look, she added, "I bake to soothe my conscience whenever one of my spells go wrong." There was another pause. "Wish I could get some to him… I feel so awfully guilty, even… even after everything."

"Well, it's not like it's a bomb or something," Dawn said, trying to cheer Willow up, "So it's no biggie, right?"

"Twelve champagne roses long of stem, no words on a white card." Willow murmured. She shuddered. "He understood. He knew."

"What?" Buffy blinked, feeling the discrepancy people sense when they realize they're on the wrong brain frequency as someone else. "Who knew what?"

"When Oz left me something I tried – for a short while – was to build a mental image of the 'perfect boyfriend', who'd give me all the things Oz never had." Willow felt the tears welling up again, and forced them down. "It didn't help – because I couldn't really think of a lot of things he had never given or offered me. Maybe it was because I was too… "

"So this roses thing was one of them?" Dawn interrupted before Willow went into another guilt trip.

"Yeah – I like champagne roses, and I was heavily into metaphors then, so 'long stemmed'– uncut, nearly natural, for 'natural' love, and… and no words, because I think words of love should… should be spoken aloud where the other can tell if you rehearsed them or if it came from the heart. Words on paper – you can slowly think of the message and butter it up so much that it loses a lot of the raw sincerity." Willow was flushed with embarrassment now. "I'm so pitiful."

"No, that's very sweet," Dawn said loyally, "I wish my boyfriend would give me that." At the baleful look Buffy shot her, Dawn added hastily, "When I get one. If I get one. Buffy! Stop looking at me like that!"

Constantine chuckled. "Your little sis has to grow up sometime, luv."

"Don't I know it," Buffy muttered, then turned her attention back to Willow. "Do you think it was a lucky guess?"

"Lucky guess, me arse," Constantine said thoughtfully. "'learnin' of heart's words, understandin' of soul's truth'. I think what the spell did was to give him knowledge of yourself. What you want, what you like, what you don't like – all that. Maybe it even gave him knowledge of every bleedin' thing you know, so that he knows the human language now."

Willow felt slightly sick. Knowledge of herself? All the hidden desires or opinions that one kept from the outside world so as to preserve the innate sense of Self, to keep one sane… known to another? She heard everything else going on around her dimly, as though she were in a trance.

"I'm going to make more hot chocolate," Dawn said decisively, grabbing Willow's now-empty cup. "It'd make you feel better."

"What kind of translation spell is that?" Buffy was demanding of Constantine.

"It did translate… though maybe not what she was intendin' it to do, luv." Constantine replied mildly. "Her heart's words from unshaped thoughts into knowledge."

"So that elf knows everything about her? As in, her entire life? Would it know about us too?"

Willow wished she could shut out the words. All the words. Silence was a bliss that was denied to her as surely as redress and atonement, it seemed.

"Until that point of time, probably," Constantine replied, "Maybe give or take her actual history."

"I have to tell Giles." Buffy reached over and hugged Willow, though Willow didn't respond. "Hang in there."

Constantine studied Willow. The blank, shocked look on her face reminded him of some animal caught in the headlights of a car, where the rush and the blaze of lights renders it still, frozen, unresponding. "Red? Luv?"

"He knows," Willow's pained eyes met his.

"Yeah… so?"

"It's… it's like a violation!" Willow burst out. "Everything I've ever kept from people!"

"Look at it this way, luv," Constantine said firmly. "I don't think he's going to shout it out to everyone, okay? He's here for somethin', we find out what he's here for, if it's relatively harmless, we give it to him, and he sods off to where he came from. End of problem."

"But what if he doesn't? What if the spell made him love me?" Willow shivered, and asked a question that had been bothering her. "Can love be compelled?"

"Normally, I'd say no," Constantine wished he was elsewhere, drinking himself under a table. A nice, brainless activity with little consequences except to himself. "But now luv – I'm not sure. Maybe he's tryin' to get on your good side, and then… "

"Don't say it," Willow said wearily. Another bad thought hit her. "If he knows what I know, what if he starts calling on all sorts of Gods too?"

"Them dark elves usually only keep to one," Constantine said reassuringly. Actually, he had no idea as to the actual theological state of dark elves, his contact in the Dreaming being unwilling to discuss his society, but he didn't particularly care.

"But… "

"You're tired, Red. It'd look better in the mornin'."

Willow sighed. If she slept tonight she was sure that she'd have nightmares. "Will it ever come?"

"Sleep," Constantine said, and her eyes closed slowly, as if pulled down by heavy weights, and she slumped down on the sofa, slumbering at last.

Dawn approached, holding a cup of hot chocolate. "Oh great. Who's going to drink it now?" she complained. "And how are we going to get her upstairs?"

"I'd drink the hot chocolate, luv – and your sis can take her up. You go help her with the roses," Constantine took the cup from her. Buffy nodded behind Dawn, finished talking to the phone, then gently picked up her best friend and went upstairs, followed by her sister, and still unnoticed to all, the Wizard's Eye.

Constantine closed his eyes and concentrated on just feeling sensations to try and calm down. The heat from the liquid, the smooth, creamy sweetness, the warm porcelain under his fingers, yielding leather at his back, soft carpet on his feet – yielding to pure feeling, he soothed his mind enough to prevent himself from overreacting. When he finished and looked up, the sisters were coming down, Dawn gingerly holding the roses as if afraid that they would explode in her face. Buffy sat down at the sofas, while her sister busied herself trying to find a vase.

"Giles said something about how he wished the elf wouldn't act during ungodly hours," Buffy grinned, "But he just said that since nothing seemed to be wrong, just keep watch on Willow, if we're really worried. We can take shifts if you want… "

"I can get somethin' to watch her," Constantine said, giving Dawn the empty cup. She muttered something about her not being a maid, but wandered off to wash it anyway. "The panther. It can make itself invisible to the elf if it wants to be – and if the friggin' elf tries anythin', he might get a bad shock."

"You can summon a panther?" Dawn asked excitedly from the kitchen. "Can I see? Can I?"

Constantine, always happy to have an appreciative audience, obliged. Buffy watched her sister coo and cuddle a huge panther who shot Constantine a look that was clearly reproachful – and laughed.

**

Nalfein, sitting ramrod straight against the wall, holding his staff across his lap with both hands, eyes closed, his mind focused totally on his spell. It was disconcerting having such a wider range of vision as offered by the Eye until one relaxed into it. He had located the house by questioning some of the vampires about possible spellcasters in the area, and the only one who fit his description was known as 'Willow'. He found the name fitting, even in the crude human language, which he somehow understood at the moment, all the easier to speak to the vampires instead of having to waste the temporary Comprehend Language spells.

Willow – slender yet strong in spirit, with a quiet grace under a semblance of effervescence. Beautiful.

He had levitated the roses there onto her bed – he wished he could take her on it – and then had to creep back to his crypt, knowing that it was unlikely that she would welcome the sight of him at the moment. It would need patience – which he hoped would have the reward he wanted, acceptance into her sweet embrace – and perhaps a return of the same emotions.

There had been another mage in the house that he made a note of looking out for – he had cast a spell of clairvoyance or some equivalent, surely, because he had found that Nalfein was the culprit who had sent the roses. However, the mage had not noticed the Wizard's Eye, to Nalfein's relief.

Willow had reacted to the gift exactly as Nalfein had thought she would. No matter – she would be reconciled in time, and then her resolve would weaken. It would need time – time that Nalfein was not sure if he had. He dared not throw away the spider pendant, and its mere presence seemed to be accusing, mocking his new indecision.

There had been a list of items on her desk, with the words 'To Get' written in her neat hand on top in red marker, along with the words 'money! I need money…' after it. The items were certainly curious – an obsidian cat? But Nalfein decided to try and help her by finding the things. From earlier, overheard conversations in the house, he knew that a lot of the items were expensive, and apparently they were some sort of sacrifice to some Gods. He didn't claim to understand humans. Perhaps he could force some demons to obtain them for him.

Now he watched her as she slept peacefully on her bed, red hair splayed wantonly on her white pillows, and his mind clouded with images that grew more and more erotic than the last.

**

Willow woke to see a panther curled up at her feet and watching her solemnly – and nearly freaked again until she remembered that Constantine had a panther rather like this one when he came out of the Hellmouth. She searched her sleep-fogged mind for the name, then found it. "Good morning, Guen."

The panther yawned at her, displaying an impressive set of teeth. Willow closed her eyes and leisurely went through everything that had happened last night, winced, then looked at the panther again. "I'm pathetic, aren't I?"

It cocked its head at her almost comically, then shook it.

Willow grinned. "You're too nice." The panther snorted at her as if it understood, then got off the bed and padded out of the door. It took a moment for her stomach to register the smell of fresh waffles and acknowledge it with a rumble.

Finishing with toiletries she ran down to the kitchen, where Buffy gave her a smile of relief. "Will! Get your thieving mentor out of the kitchen before I stake him!"

Laughing, she grabbed Constantine by his elbow and dragged him out, though a last effort on his part managed to snag him a bit more of the waffles, to an outraged squeal from Dawn. "Hey! Buffy, he took some more!"

Constantine found the panther curled up on a large part of his sofa, and muttering, he prodded at it until it moved to Willow's sofa and put its large head on her lap, purring as she rubbed it behind its ears.

"Nothing happened at night?" Willow asked, oddly disappointed when Constantine shook his head. She was beginning to have strange dreams about the dark elf that involved whipped cream…

She shut her eyes tightly, trying to will all temptation away from her. Love that wasn't given freely wasn't worth having, was it? Even if it could be done – it would not have any true value, any actual meaning, if it hadn't come voluntarily, because in loving someone, that one gave the someone a piece of oneself – such that if it was of one's accord, it was one of the greatest gift one could give another. So why did she feel so tempted to leave this spell as it was?

Willow opened her eyes to see Constantine studying her. "What shall I do?" she whispered.

His voice had no inflexion in it as he replied, "What you see fit, luv."

**

Spike growled to himself as he paced his crypt. The sun had risen and his undead body was appealing to him to sleep, but he refused, still burning with his craving for the Slayer. How dared she toy with him like that?

"Bitch," he muttered, though the word somehow came out as a moan.

"Fuck."

That word, if anything, worsened his condition, and to his annoyance, Spike found he had been enjoying being toyed with. If he didn't watch it, he was going to turn into a pansy worse than Peaches.

He needed a cold shower, and then he had to get to the Magic Box. Something had happened to Willow last night, and…

Bloody hell… he was even beginning to feel protective of the Slayer's friends! Though Willow was nice to him, as was Dawn, Anya was relatively friendly as long as he kept his hands off the Magic Box merchandise, and only Giles and Xander were anything of a problem. If he managed to get the Slayer alone, then… he hoped she'd pull off something like what she'd done to him in the sewers again. Shaking his head at how whipped he'd become, Spike slunk off for his shower.

**

Research was resumed to try and find a way of canceling the spell, but as Constantine pointed out, short of a brain-wipe, there was hardly any spell that countered the transfer of information. Giles agreed that canceling the induced emotion would be more important, and was about to sit down and do the research, when Anya asked, "Why are you people doing this?"

"We have to cancel the spell, Anya," Willow said firmly.

"What for?" Anya inquired.

"What do you mean what for?" Giles moved his glasses higher up on his nose to regard his shop assistant.

"It doesn't seem to be doing any harm – and it might be the only thing stopping this guy from doing horrible magic things to us," Anya said brightly. "That's good, right?"

"The spell makes him love Will, not the rest of us," Buffy pointed out.

"Yes, but he might… might realize that if he did something to us, Willow would be turned irrevocably against him," Giles said mildly.

"Giles, are you on our side or what?" Buffy pouted.

"I am, but Anya has a point," Giles sighed. "Ultimately, however, it's still Willow's choice whether or not she wants to cancel it."

Willow's mind roared into a mass of conflicting emotions – again. Didn't she write in her diary before that she wished she had a lover who would understand her? Know her every need and want?

But of his own free will and discovered knowledge…

Was free will so important? Was there truly something inherently wrong in using this spell to meddle with the emotions of just this one? What if she swore never to do it again, would she have the strength not to? And even if she did cancel the spell, what if he blamed them for it – rightfully – and then began killing her friends? Would she be able to forgive herself for that? This mage had demonstrated his willingness and ability to wreck violence quite clearly, and he hadn't had a very high opinion of them, by the expression on his face and in his tone of voice, when he'd met them.

And what was he here for? When he was taken by this spell, would it not be a good chance now to ask him?

Say if she left the spell on him – what if there was an expiry date on it, and he turned on them when they did not expect it?

Guiltily, she realized she had been thinking in mercenary terms again. The issue here was moral, wasn't it? Was it morally right to be able to compel one of the greatest of human emotions, even if it had been an accident?

What was worse was that Willow found that she was asking herself whether she cared if it was morally right, in the light of the circumstances.

"Will?" Buffy was asking.

Willow bit her lip. "I… I think I should take the chance to ask him what he's here for first before we decide. If he's up to no good… maybe this way we can prevent him from doing it."

"Good idea," Giles approved, and Buffy grinned. Constantine, however, seemed to be able to see through her, as if he understood exactly why she was trying to stall for time. He got up from his chair abruptly.

"Time to talk to the Gods again, luv," he told her, and they walked to the training room. When relatively out of the others' hearing, he said, "Take your time to decide, Red."

"You don't mind?" Willow blinked at him.

"Considerin' that if Rose is right, he might be tryin' a breakin'… yeah, I don't mind. Though if you're goin' to ask me, I'm goin' to go along."

Willow couldn't help by grin at the belligerence of the last line.

"Yeah, a bleedin' chaperone, at my age," Constantine muttered, then added, "And 'sides, you'd be better off if you slowly found the best way out of this, one you won't regret."

"I'm glad we met you," Willow smiled warmly. "Even in this short period, you're now like a second father to me and Buffy and Dawn… though maybe third, since Giles is very fatherly too… that's nice, isn't it?"

Mildly stunned, Constantine watched Willow prepare her circle and start calling up the next on her Goddess list.

A father? Christ. He had to get out of Sunnydale immediately after all this finished up…

Buffy entered the room, glanced at Willow, and then sat down next to Constantine, her eyes seeking his for reassurance.

"Everythin's all right," he murmured at her, and she smiled, reminding him, for a moment, of Gemma.

"Thanks," she replied, squeezing his hand lightly, conscious of her Slayer strength. "For everything."

Damn. He had a feeling that he might not be able to leave. At least not now… but afterwards, he had to make some decisions.

**

Spike entered the Magic Box by the back, and waited for his skin to stop hissing under the sun, before folding up the blanket he usually used to cover himself whenever he sprinted around under the sunlight and putting it on a chair at the research table. Finding that Buffy wasn't around, he nodded at Anya, offered Giles a cocky "Good mornin'," then wandered into the training room.

Buffy and Constantine were watching Willow cast her calling spells, and Buffy grinned impishly at him when he entered. He sat down next to her, still unused to her strange attitude towards him. He rather hoped it was genuine and not yet another weird spell of Willow's, though he doubted it.

"Quiet," she told him when he opened his mouth to greet her. He nodded.

What she did next was gratifying – though he didn't expect it either. She got up and ensconced herself on his lap, chuckling and wriggling until she got comfortable. Obviously, that had an expected reaction from him – though instead of jumping away and leaving, Buffy settled down.

"Slayer, you'd be the end of me," he muttered into her hair, all the words he had thought of saying to her face forgotten. Bloody hell, she felt so damned good…

"Quiet." Buffy told him, and squirmed a bit more in emphasis. He stifled a groan by kissing the top of her head, her vanilla scent intoxicating.

"I'm not goin' to be silent a lot longer, Slayer," he told her.

"I said quiet."

"Slayer!" Spike gasped when she did it again.

"I suggest the two of you take it outside," Constantine observed mildly from where he sat. "Right now."

"Aww, but I want to watch Willow," Buffy pouted. "Something bad might happen, and then I'd have to slay it."

"Then get off him, luv," Constantine retorted.

"Do you want me to get off, Spike?" Buffy asked playfully, looking up into his blue eyes. The expression of adoration mixed with lust on his face was all the answer she needed. A moral little protesting voice in her mind was making a lot of noise, but for once, she ignored it. This was great fun.

"Bloody hell," Constantine sighed. "Damn teenagers."

--

Notes and References:

Wizard's Eye: This is a standard Dungeons and Dragons spell described in earlier chapters. It's a great help to use in Baldur's Gate II. Spy out the dragon, then cast lots and lots and lots of cloudkill spells on it… haha…

Nalfein's problem: From what I understand, dark elven society has some emphasis on sexual activities in their normal, everyday life, debauchery and such. The 'reward' for the top student of the Priestess school – Arach-Tinilith - each graduation day is sex with a big demon. Don't ask me how, and no, I am not kidding.

Whipped cream: I love whipped cream! On ice cream, strawberries, peaches… other things…

Peaches: One of Spike's pet names for his sire Angel, or, when minus his soul, called Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, a master vampire who turned Spike. Spike enjoys annoying both personalities of Angel.