Title: Never Hesitate Author: Voici Email: voici@mail2nemesis.com Rating: PG, will escalate to NC-17. Summary: Series. Willow grapples with her own power and guilt through tormenting a master of pain-Spike. Who will break first? Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, all hail Mutant Enemy. Spoilers: Up through Season 3, but the story line is played with a bit.

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Three vampires levitated in the air.

The night was completely silent, as Willow raised a silver sword and neatly decapitated each vamp. She didn't hesitate. She never hesitated anymore- because of her hesitation Buffy was in the hospital with a broken back.

Her strategy was simple: immobilize and dust. But this was her third night hunting and victims were running low. Willow had to rip the last three right out of their graves.

Running out of vampires meant returning to the hospital. It meant standing over Buffy's broken body and remembering how she had failed her friend.

Buffy was walking her home, and as always, Willow was lulled into a sense of safety by her very presence. So, when a vamp picked a fight, she cowered to the side and waited for Buffy to dust him. But it never happened. Instead, he ended up snapping Buffy's back over a tomb stone. And Willow just watched. She saw her friend lifted up into the air. Saw her being dashed towards the granite. And she had just watched.

Buffy may have already died once, but to Willow she was always invincible. Beautiful, powerful, and in control-things that Willow would never be. It had never occurred to her that she could do anything but get in the way during slayage. Sure she could restore a soul, but she never wanted to admit the violent potential of her own power. She envied Buffy, but in her heart, she knew she needed Buffy the warrior so she could remain Willow the victim. She had always thought that she would be the only one hurt by her choice, but instead it had been Buffy.

Of course, Giles and Xander couldn't understand that. They would tell her that it wasn't her fault. They would go on and on about how she always had to take everyone's guilt onto herself, about her selflessness, about her caring. They didn't blame her, because they never expected anything from her. They never expected her to be anything but the victim. Even Giles didn't understand the applied power in the simplest spells. Her power.

So, when she donned her black silk pants and jacket and went hunting she didn't tell her friends. She didn't tell them how she had summoned the ancient sword of Diana as her weapon. How with a word, she could induce paralysis, and in a single movement she could decapitate.

Oh, there were other spells that would work. She could set them on fire, make them tear out their own jugular, turn their blood to ashes, even a simple pencil levitation through the heart could do the trick. She liked the elegance, the efficiency of her method though. She liked the way her muscles ached at the end of the night, the perfect arch of the sword. No banter, no warning, just silence, stillness, oblivion.

Willow felt the anger and guilt rising in her again as she scanned the graveyard, but the tide was soon stifled by a sharp pain to her head. The darkness engulfed her in something like peace as she lost consciousness and fell into the arms of her assailant.