Couples: W/B weirdness (but isn't this whole thing weird?)
IWD: Untouchable Web
Untouchable. You think you're untouchable. You know no one's untouchable. Garbage; Untouchable; Beautiful Garbage
"Hey, Buffy. Do you want some cocoa? Tara's trying to get me off coffee. You know, stop the bouncing and, and the jittering and the incessant chattering and, I think, the long run-on sentences but I could be wrong about that. I wonder if that means Tara's been buying decaf hot chocolate. Do they have decaf hot chocolate?" Willow sat across from Buffy at the kitchen table, steaming cup in hand. "I'm sure they do. I mean, other people must be caffeine addicts too and have girl- or boyfriends who would prefer them to not talk endlessly or -- or giggle for no reason. Actually even I find that a little disconcerting. I don't know, does it bother you Buffy?"
Willow looked up from her cup as she paused in her chatter. "Buffy?" The blond stared at her silent. "Oh, did I not let you get a word in edgewise? I'm sorry, Buff, I know we've been working on this whole back-into-human-emotions-thing and, and I'm not helping I'm sure. So is there anything you want to say?"
Buffy stared at her with the cold eyes that Willow sometimes caught her using out her window or on the dishes when the she spaced out.
"Hello, Buffy," she sing songed
She blinked. Well, Willow thought somewhat uncharitably, at least she's not zoned out again. "Okay, I get it, this is the non-talking time. I can do that. I can not talk. I'll just sip my cocoa and . . . and stare at, uh, at the marshmallows while they melt," she said with her typical perkiness. Too bad she didn't feel that way.
Had it always been this dark in here? Funny, Willow didn't feel like standing up and turning on a light. Buffy certainly didn't look like she was moving any time. It was all right though. It was all right. Somehow this, the dark, the silence even the hot chocolate in her hand, felt like it all belonged.
She was still staring at Willow. Darn but this was becoming creepy. Willow wanted to giggle. She'd thought Darn. Placing her hand over her mouth, she started to but then . . .
Willow was silenced by Buffy's unwavering stare, by those cold eyes not trained outside or on some nowhere place but on her. On Willow.
Was it just her or was the silence alive? Goddess, she could swear it was a breathing, pulsating thing. She could feel it over her shoulder, snuffling her hair, smelling her cocoa, running incorporeal fingers along the back of her neck and down the backs of her arms.
She had to turn around. She had to face the silence, the stillness. She had to know the air around her wasn't alive. But Buffy's eyes wouldn't let her go. Cold, cold and so dead they held her trapped like an icy blue cage. Pinned, Willow could not even release her hands from the cooling mug. Trapped between her Buffy's cold eyes and the stillness surrounding them Willow felt her heart race and her chest rise and fall, rapid, fearful.
Fight or flight. Fight or flight. She had to choose. She had to choose!
Willow could not choose for she had no choices. Buffy would not let her go and Willow could not speak, could not raise her hands, could not sigh and break the silence. If only she could do something so little as sigh she would be free but Buffy would not let her be free. Willow was at Buffy's mercy and Buffy's mercy seemed to holding Willow in her gaze, a toy, a pawn, an exercise in miscellaneous power over the powerless, over she who could not speak for herself because Buffy would not let her speak!
And Willow knew that she would go mad.
It was if she weren't sitting at all. She couldn't feel the chair beneath her nor the table holding her arms. All Willow could feel was the gently frightening sensation of the living breathing silence touching her hands and face and calves and back.
Willow remembered this feeling. It was like this whenever she was researching in the Sunnydale High library late at night, Giles gone off somewhere or other, Xander getting snacks with Oz, and Buffy on patrol. Suddenly the sound of the computer would fade and there would only be the oppressive silence weighing her down until Willow thought she would have to scream to make it go away, that bringing back noise would bring back her sanity. Those were the nights she stood up, pushed back her heavy wooden chair and call vainly into the night, Who's there, Who's there, half expecting the night to answer. Knowing that it could.
Then Buffy would walk through the door with a, Hey Wills, and all would be right with the world.
If only Buffy would--
She stood with such unexpectedness that Willow flinched. Suddenly the redhead found herself beside the table as if they had never been seated there that night, clutched in a tight hug with the Slayer.
A tighter hug. A tighter hug. She couldn't breathe. "B-Buffy . . ." she croaked.
"Untouchable," the Slayer whispered into the witch's quickly reddening ear as fiercely as her hug.. "You think you're untouchable. You know no one's untouchable."
Willow stumbled back, released from the Slayer's deathly grip and gaze. She was alone.
§§§
Her heart was beating out of control and she still felt like she couldn't breathe. Slowly, frightened for once in the waking world, she brought her hands to her throat. Hot. Looking over she made sure Tar--
Tara wasn't in bed. Furrowing her brow, Willow stepped out of bed. Maybe she was in the bathroom? Tara wasn't in the bathroom but in the mirror she more clearly see the redness covering her throat . . .and her face. Her face was flushed. "As if I couldn't breathe." Even her voice surprised her, rasping painfully.
Maybe it was time to tell the others.
"Buffy?" she called softly, not wanting to disturb Dawn and Tara wherever she was. "Buffy?" She wasn't in her room.
Dawn wasn't in hers and Tara was no where to be found.
Worried now, really worried for the first time since the first dream with Angel and Spike, she dialed Xander and Anya. "Hello you've reached Xander and Anya--"
"Soon to be married--"
"Jeez Ahn, announce it to the whole world now will you?"
"You don't want people to know about us?"
"Anya, honey, of course I do. I just don't think we should be freely announcing this over our answering machine."
"But, but--"
Willow left a message. Should she call Giles? No! Stupid! What was she thinking. She'd use magic to find them. "I mean, if I could raise Buffy from the dead why can't I find out where they are? It's such a simple spell," she said running upstairs. Why do things the normal way, after all, and freaking Giles out when she could just figure things for herself?
§§§
". . .so mote it be!"
The Summer's house was gone.
Fin
