7-11/Part2: Willow
Kennedy thinks penises are ugly.
Sometimes the fact that she's - you know - so completely and totally gay kinda bothers me. She's been gay her whole life, even before she knew what gay was. She told me that when she was in kindergarten a boy asked her if she wanted to see his - you know - and she knew straight away right then that she absolutely did not. She says just that once was close enough. I didn't like to tell her that, up close, they're really not that bad looking. In fact, the right person's in the just the right kind of light, can actually look sort of nice. Sculptural even.
A bit like a flower stamen.
I don't think I could say that to her, although sometimes I like to imagine the look on her face if I did. Once when she was talking about how she 'doesn't understand the attraction', how men's bodies are all 'hard and lumpy' where ours' (she meant girls') are all soft, I had to stop myself from saying that actually I remember that Oz's was kind of bendy and silky and he had these cute little nipples that made you just want to nibble on them. I didn't though. I just went 'umhm' and kind of nodded instead, like I was agreeing. It seemed like the best thing to do. Finding out her new girlfriend used to like penises as well as black magic is probably more than she can safely handle, at the moment at least.
I have to remind myself that, even though she knows far more than I do about being a lesbian (and about arm to arm combat), Kennedy's still pretty young. Sometimes when we're in bed at night, I try to explain to her how everything is connected, how everything in and on the earth affects everything and everyone else. She listens, but I can tell she doesn't like how intense I get. She says dumb flirty stuff to make me stop being so serious, like; 'so does that mean if I kiss you here, someone somewhere else is going to get all turned on?' Then she wonders why I don't want to talk any more and just want to go straight to sleep.
Tara understood that kind of stuff a lot better, but then she pretty much understood everything. She knew things, felt them, instinctively, which meant she understood people better than anyone else I've ever met. For her a person's colour or their sex, or even their species wasn't really an issue. She'd had boyfriends and girlfriends, because with her it was always all about the soul. I loved that about her. That most of all I mean. That she was just the sort of person I wanted to be.
I try to remember everything she ever told me, but I can't. Sometimes I think I'm losing her, that she's melting away into nothing and I get frightened. I try to remember the way her hair smelled just after a bath, the sound of her laugh in our room, when she was warm and pink-cheeked and wrapped up in sunlight and the bedsheets. I try to remember the song she sung to me the day we all sang, but I forget the tune. I'm afraid someday I'll forget all of those things, but I tell myself that even if I do it won't really matter. That I've made a place for her, that I carry her with me. Because she told me that. I sure I remember she told me that.
Today the house seems way too noisy and full of people; all of them asking questions, talking about things I know must be important. I feel like I'm standing outside, watching them get on with the preparations we always seem to be making these days. I must look like just normal-Willow though because no one says anything. Normal-Willow working away on her computer, like she always does. Looking stuff up, researching new spells and ingredients and the history of evil, and how to fight something she's almost certain now can't be fought at all. Normal-Willow trying really hard not to look as terrified and lost and trembly as she really, really feels.
I can't do this. And Buffy thinks I can. They all do. I know they think I'm going to find a way, find some incantation, a spell or maybe a useful and easy to follow manual: 'how to stop the ancient and omnipotent original source of all evil'. But I know something they don't, that no one here could know, and I don't just know it either. I feel it. In my bones. Like Tara would have too if she was still here. I know that it can't be stopped.
Out of the corner of one eye I can see Kennedy looking over at me, but I deliberately don't look back. I know she's watching me, worried I'm too quiet, so I make a face like I've just found something interesting on screen; 'oh, hey...what's this?' and after a minute she looks away again, goes back to sharpening her big axe. She's not ready to hear what I have to say, none of them are.
I realise Buffy is standing beside me, and automatically I assume the expression I know she wants to see; a slight frown with just a touch of studious zeal thrown in. But she doesn't ask me anything for a moment, just stands looking at the screen. She's tired, I can tell by the way she's standing, but when she finally asks if I'm ok her voice sounds calm and completely together.
"I'm fine. Just wondering when Giles said he'd be back tonight. "
"You want him to help you with the translation?"
"The...? No..."
Part of a spell that was amongst Wood's Mom's things, and I hadn't even remembered that that's what I was supposed to have been doing. I shake my head and I think maybe she's noticed now that I'm not quite here.
"You sure you're ok?"
I know she cares if I am, if I'm not, but the answer is just too huge, too wide and too scary for me to even start to put into words. Besides, her eyes look so sad and there are these big purple shadows under them that I know never used to be there. So I just smile.
"Sure, I'm Triple-A.O.K, Buff. Just a little tired...little punchy maybe."
She rubs my shoulder.
"You should maybe go get some rest. I need you strong Will."
and then turns back to the Potentials.
"O.K, Julia, Amanda, you'll take point tonight. Rona, Shannon, I want you at the rear. Everyone have a weapon? OK. Any questions? Good. Let's move."
And just like that she slips into the role of General. I find myself staring after her as she leads them all out of the house, wondering how it is she does that. How she can just turn the power off and on at will. How she always gets it done.
"Pretty incredible."
Spike's standing on the other side of the table, and it takes me a minute to realise that he's been there for a while. He watches Buffy go out the door with a little smile on his face, and then turns back to me.
"She's tough on them, but she gets results."
I don't mean to frown at him but I do.
"You're not going too?"
He shakes his head,
"Don't need baby sitting these days do they? Regular little army."
and then gives me one of his sly smirks.
" 'Specially that little firecracker of yours. Damn near took my head off today."
I think he's going to turn and go then, but he doesn't, and after a minute I have to look back at the screen. Scrolling down through another useless page I try not to let him see that his being there bothers me.
I manage about fifteen seconds.
"So you're just going to stand there?"
"Well...yeah?"
He crosses his arms super-casually, like he has nothing better to do,
"Not in your way am I?"
and I can tell now that he knows something's a matter. Spike has this annoying way of picking up on stuff that other people just miss. I used to think it was a vampire thing, like a sixth sense, but while Buffy was gone I got to know him a little better and realised that it's just him. He's pretty dumb in a lot of ways, but very smart in others.
"Something bothering you, Red?"
He's looking at me funny now, and I know that if I don't get away soon he'll start asking me exactly the kinds of questions no one else has had the nerve too up until now. I push my chair back and make sure not to look right at him.
"You know, I think Xander forgot to get more toilet paper earlier. I think maybe I'll just take a walk down to the...market."
He doesn't say anything and I make it all the way to the door. As I reach up for my coat I can see him following me with his eyes, like he's sizing me up for something. I know he's just trying to figure out what might be bugging me, but when he looks at me that way it always makes me kinda nervous. I know he's a totally different Spike from the one that almost killed me twice, but well, it's still a little hard to separate the two completely in my head. I don't hold it against him exactly, I mean it's not as if any of my other friends haven't ever tried to murder me, I'm just saying I don't altogether trust him yet, not the way that Buffy seems to anyway.
Maybe that's the kind of trust you only have after you've been handcuffed by that someone to a bed naked though.
"So you...ah...need anything? From the market I mean? Gum? Some chips or something?"
I expect him to say cigarettes, because he always does, but he just looks at me. Doesn't say a thing.
"No? OK? Well, see ya then!"
I let the porch door slam behind me and let out a huge sigh of relief.
Outside it's cool and just getting dark, and I realise that a long quiet walk is probably just what I need to shake out the black feelings of doom that are squatting in my head. The air is soft and silky, and it's not late enough yet to be worried about Bringers. Even so my ears are on red alert, and I nearly jump out of my skin when Spike says something right next to me.
"S'nice night."
"Jeez!!! Don't! Why do you do that?!"
I can't see his face in the dark too well but I'm guessing he's probably smirking at me again, really enjoying just scaring the crap out of me.
"Couldn't you just...you know...clear your throat next time or something?!
He doesn't reply and, annoyed, I start to walk away. I expect him to head off now in the direction of the cemetery, but instead he just keeps pace with me. His legs are about the same length as mine, but his strides must be longer or something because it feels like he takes one to every three I do. He doesn't seem to notice that I'm walking faster and faster though and I start to think that, for a supposedly perceptive vampire, he can be a real jerk sometimes.
"Don't you have somewhere else to go?"
And again, I don't mean to sound so damned snippy with him, but well, he's being Spike. He gets it at last though, stops walking and lets me go on ahead.
He makes me mad a lot of the time, and that's always made the being scared of him sort of fade into the background. But even before he got his chip taken out and got his soul back, he'd say something dumb or incredibly tasteless and I'd completely forget that he wasn't just a normal guy. I mean, I get where Xander's coming from and everything, but it's hard not to forget someone's evil when they're hanging around with your friends the whole time and talking about stuff. A lot of the time he can be pretty good company. He's been around for over a century so there isn't a knock-knock joke he hasn't heard, and he knows more about demon languages and the whole history of evil than even Giles, although more from the other working end of course. He's never very big with the details, but if you ask him the right questions and he's in just the right mood, he'll tell you pretty much anything.
Besides Tara kinda liked him. I always think that that counts for something.
The lights of the 7-11 are all glowey and warm yellow up ahead, and I realise when my tummy sends up a Hellmouth-worthy rumble that, what with the the heapin' helpings of self doubt, I haven't actually gotten around to eating anything today. And I can't see them yet from where I am, but I'm pretty sure at this moment there's a jumbo-size microwaveable taco in there somewhere with my name on. I've almost got it in my sights, when a shape lurches forward out of the shadows and grabs for my arm.
"Willow!"
O.K, and that means that my nerves are pretty much shot, because without even thinking about it I've thrown up a barrier that sends them half way across the parking lot. It takes me a couple more seconds to realise what's happened though before I move to go help the person up, but when I start to, I stop when I see that it's Amy. That takes me a moment or two as well of course, because she doesn't look an awful lot like the Amy I saw just a couple of weeks ago. Her hair is hanging round her face in kind of thick black clumps, and her eyes are all wide and glassy as if she hasn't slept for a month.
"Amy. Hey."
That's all I can manage, but she's sort of taken me by surprise. I'll probably think of something more cutting later, but right now that's the best I can do. I turn around to go inside.
"You have to help me!"
OK, and now she has my attention again because;
"And no, I really don't."
I try to walk away, but this time she's not letting me go so easily. I try to send her backwards again with a another heavier-duty version of the same spell, but she flicks it away like it's pixie dust. Her hands on my wrists are like claws, and I suddenly get that all the black stuff on her cheeks and in her hair isn't dirt. It's blood.
"Listen to me Willow. You have to listen to me! Something's coming!"
She's freaking me out a little now and, almost without meaning to, a crackle of magic flickers out of me and down to my fingers. I stop it almost as soon as it starts, but Amy's eyes go wide as she feels it and she grabs on even tighter.
"No, don't stop! You have to give me some."
Her eyes close and I recognise a look on her face that I've nearly forgotten, that I hope I'll forget. She's hungry, and giving her a taste of magic like I just did was like giving an appetiser to a starving man. Her hands grasp at thin air as I start to back away, and for some reason I'm suddenly reminded of this part in a movie I saw once; when a leper woman tries to touch Jesus' cloak.
"Stay away from me."
She's on her feet again, and suddenly she doesn't look pale and weak any more. She pushes back her hair and I see a flash of the old evil Amy behind her smile.
"Here I come. Gonna try and stop me, witch?"
She starts towards me and I concentrate on finding the light, the positive energy I know is there somewhere but somethings blocking it, must be blocking it, because all I can feel is blackness. Darkness is coming off her in huge, rolling waves and every spell I know is suddenly gone from my head. Amy's voice is soft and loud all at the same time, and as she leans in to speak to me I feel like I've been paralysed.
"You can't stop me though can you? You can't stop anything. They all think you can but you can't."
"What are you doing?"
I know she's not as strong as this. She's not as strong as me, but somehow she's pushing me down to the ground.
"Just taking what you don't need."
Her hands are fastened around my wrists like steel and I can feel something else now. She's trying to pull something out of me. Her eyes are jet black.
"You have all this...power, Willow. And you've got no use for it."
She's smiling and I see the magic crackling blue and purple as she drags it out of me. Her breathing is shallow and rapid and I realise that mine is too, that I'm feeling everything she's feeling. Terror and blackness and everything she's seen and done, everything that's been done to her. The faces of Bringers with their scarred eyes, a curved knife, and then something else. A man's face, handsome and at the same time, cold and cruel. Pure evil. His hand coming up to her face with a smile.
"You won't be able to stop him, no one can. So you might as well...just..."
"Just give it up, love"
A sound like a whip-crack and just like that, it's gone. The sickening blackness and the pain and her thoughts in my head, and suddenly she's lying on the ground ten feet away, her eyes still jet-black and wide as saucers. My head's still spinning though, so for some reason I don't get straight away that her mouth is bleeding at the corner because she's just been hit. A hand reaches down in front of my face and I look up to see that it's Spike's.
"You want to be careful who you stop and pass the time with, pigeon. Some nasty types hanging around down here at night."
He shoots a quick glance over at Amy, but she's crawling away now on her hands and knees, looking every bit as pathetic and weak-looking as she was a few minutes ago when she first grabbed me. I let Spike help me up and then I just stand there wathcing her go. Quietly, he brushes the dirt off my coat with the flat of his hand.
"Don't worry about it. Don't reckon she'll be coming back for seconds."
He sounds so calm that I think maybe he doesn't realise what's just happened. I stare at him as he bends down to pick up the hat I was wearing that's dropped to the ground.
"She was trying to..."
"To kill you. Yeah, noticed that."
He puts the hat back on my head, squints, and then straightens it.
"Wouldn't hold it against her though, pet. People do weird stuff when they're hopped up on magicks."
"I know!"
I mean I do know that.
"But she did something to me. I couldn't stop her. I felt as if I was....like she was turning me into something else. Like everything inside me was...evil again."
I swallow, because I suddenly get that I came so close and never even saw it coming.
"God, she was taking everything from me and it was all....all bad. There's so much....evil still left in me."
I look at Spike, and Spike looks back.
"Evil's in everyone. You and me, we just know her better is all."
"Her? Evil is a her?"
He glowers at me, narrows his eyes a bit.
"Him then. We've seen him up close, got his number. Why do you think he wants us out of the picture so badly? He knows we can do some damage."
I think he's right, but I don't say so. I just let him dust me off some more, and I watch as Amy finally gets to her feet on the other side of the parking lot and limps away. Spike looks up, sees where I'm looking and gives me a shove. Not very hard but hard enough to remind me of something.
"Spike. Can I ask you a favour?"
"Depends."
He looks wary, and for a minute I forget he's a vampire. I forget about both the times he's tried to eat me, all the times he tried to kill Buffy and the time he tried to help Adam to. I even forget that sometimes he can be unfeeling and completely tactless and about the stupidest jerk I know, and I give him the biggest dumbest tightest hug I know how to give. His back goes stiffer than Giles' does, and when I finally let go his eyes are so narrow they're almost slits. I look at Spike and Spike looks back. Scuffs one foot in the dirt and clears his throat loudly.
"So what? Not got enough for a taco then?"
"Need about another fifty cents."
He drops the coins into my hand, stops. Picks out a shirt button.
"Give us a bite and we'll call it quits."
I blink, stare at him and he sighs.
"Of the taco you silly bint."
"Oh. Right. Sorry."
And then sometimes, I can pretend that he's just a normal guy.
Kennedy thinks penises are ugly.
Sometimes the fact that she's - you know - so completely and totally gay kinda bothers me. She's been gay her whole life, even before she knew what gay was. She told me that when she was in kindergarten a boy asked her if she wanted to see his - you know - and she knew straight away right then that she absolutely did not. She says just that once was close enough. I didn't like to tell her that, up close, they're really not that bad looking. In fact, the right person's in the just the right kind of light, can actually look sort of nice. Sculptural even.
A bit like a flower stamen.
I don't think I could say that to her, although sometimes I like to imagine the look on her face if I did. Once when she was talking about how she 'doesn't understand the attraction', how men's bodies are all 'hard and lumpy' where ours' (she meant girls') are all soft, I had to stop myself from saying that actually I remember that Oz's was kind of bendy and silky and he had these cute little nipples that made you just want to nibble on them. I didn't though. I just went 'umhm' and kind of nodded instead, like I was agreeing. It seemed like the best thing to do. Finding out her new girlfriend used to like penises as well as black magic is probably more than she can safely handle, at the moment at least.
I have to remind myself that, even though she knows far more than I do about being a lesbian (and about arm to arm combat), Kennedy's still pretty young. Sometimes when we're in bed at night, I try to explain to her how everything is connected, how everything in and on the earth affects everything and everyone else. She listens, but I can tell she doesn't like how intense I get. She says dumb flirty stuff to make me stop being so serious, like; 'so does that mean if I kiss you here, someone somewhere else is going to get all turned on?' Then she wonders why I don't want to talk any more and just want to go straight to sleep.
Tara understood that kind of stuff a lot better, but then she pretty much understood everything. She knew things, felt them, instinctively, which meant she understood people better than anyone else I've ever met. For her a person's colour or their sex, or even their species wasn't really an issue. She'd had boyfriends and girlfriends, because with her it was always all about the soul. I loved that about her. That most of all I mean. That she was just the sort of person I wanted to be.
I try to remember everything she ever told me, but I can't. Sometimes I think I'm losing her, that she's melting away into nothing and I get frightened. I try to remember the way her hair smelled just after a bath, the sound of her laugh in our room, when she was warm and pink-cheeked and wrapped up in sunlight and the bedsheets. I try to remember the song she sung to me the day we all sang, but I forget the tune. I'm afraid someday I'll forget all of those things, but I tell myself that even if I do it won't really matter. That I've made a place for her, that I carry her with me. Because she told me that. I sure I remember she told me that.
Today the house seems way too noisy and full of people; all of them asking questions, talking about things I know must be important. I feel like I'm standing outside, watching them get on with the preparations we always seem to be making these days. I must look like just normal-Willow though because no one says anything. Normal-Willow working away on her computer, like she always does. Looking stuff up, researching new spells and ingredients and the history of evil, and how to fight something she's almost certain now can't be fought at all. Normal-Willow trying really hard not to look as terrified and lost and trembly as she really, really feels.
I can't do this. And Buffy thinks I can. They all do. I know they think I'm going to find a way, find some incantation, a spell or maybe a useful and easy to follow manual: 'how to stop the ancient and omnipotent original source of all evil'. But I know something they don't, that no one here could know, and I don't just know it either. I feel it. In my bones. Like Tara would have too if she was still here. I know that it can't be stopped.
Out of the corner of one eye I can see Kennedy looking over at me, but I deliberately don't look back. I know she's watching me, worried I'm too quiet, so I make a face like I've just found something interesting on screen; 'oh, hey...what's this?' and after a minute she looks away again, goes back to sharpening her big axe. She's not ready to hear what I have to say, none of them are.
I realise Buffy is standing beside me, and automatically I assume the expression I know she wants to see; a slight frown with just a touch of studious zeal thrown in. But she doesn't ask me anything for a moment, just stands looking at the screen. She's tired, I can tell by the way she's standing, but when she finally asks if I'm ok her voice sounds calm and completely together.
"I'm fine. Just wondering when Giles said he'd be back tonight. "
"You want him to help you with the translation?"
"The...? No..."
Part of a spell that was amongst Wood's Mom's things, and I hadn't even remembered that that's what I was supposed to have been doing. I shake my head and I think maybe she's noticed now that I'm not quite here.
"You sure you're ok?"
I know she cares if I am, if I'm not, but the answer is just too huge, too wide and too scary for me to even start to put into words. Besides, her eyes look so sad and there are these big purple shadows under them that I know never used to be there. So I just smile.
"Sure, I'm Triple-A.O.K, Buff. Just a little tired...little punchy maybe."
She rubs my shoulder.
"You should maybe go get some rest. I need you strong Will."
and then turns back to the Potentials.
"O.K, Julia, Amanda, you'll take point tonight. Rona, Shannon, I want you at the rear. Everyone have a weapon? OK. Any questions? Good. Let's move."
And just like that she slips into the role of General. I find myself staring after her as she leads them all out of the house, wondering how it is she does that. How she can just turn the power off and on at will. How she always gets it done.
"Pretty incredible."
Spike's standing on the other side of the table, and it takes me a minute to realise that he's been there for a while. He watches Buffy go out the door with a little smile on his face, and then turns back to me.
"She's tough on them, but she gets results."
I don't mean to frown at him but I do.
"You're not going too?"
He shakes his head,
"Don't need baby sitting these days do they? Regular little army."
and then gives me one of his sly smirks.
" 'Specially that little firecracker of yours. Damn near took my head off today."
I think he's going to turn and go then, but he doesn't, and after a minute I have to look back at the screen. Scrolling down through another useless page I try not to let him see that his being there bothers me.
I manage about fifteen seconds.
"So you're just going to stand there?"
"Well...yeah?"
He crosses his arms super-casually, like he has nothing better to do,
"Not in your way am I?"
and I can tell now that he knows something's a matter. Spike has this annoying way of picking up on stuff that other people just miss. I used to think it was a vampire thing, like a sixth sense, but while Buffy was gone I got to know him a little better and realised that it's just him. He's pretty dumb in a lot of ways, but very smart in others.
"Something bothering you, Red?"
He's looking at me funny now, and I know that if I don't get away soon he'll start asking me exactly the kinds of questions no one else has had the nerve too up until now. I push my chair back and make sure not to look right at him.
"You know, I think Xander forgot to get more toilet paper earlier. I think maybe I'll just take a walk down to the...market."
He doesn't say anything and I make it all the way to the door. As I reach up for my coat I can see him following me with his eyes, like he's sizing me up for something. I know he's just trying to figure out what might be bugging me, but when he looks at me that way it always makes me kinda nervous. I know he's a totally different Spike from the one that almost killed me twice, but well, it's still a little hard to separate the two completely in my head. I don't hold it against him exactly, I mean it's not as if any of my other friends haven't ever tried to murder me, I'm just saying I don't altogether trust him yet, not the way that Buffy seems to anyway.
Maybe that's the kind of trust you only have after you've been handcuffed by that someone to a bed naked though.
"So you...ah...need anything? From the market I mean? Gum? Some chips or something?"
I expect him to say cigarettes, because he always does, but he just looks at me. Doesn't say a thing.
"No? OK? Well, see ya then!"
I let the porch door slam behind me and let out a huge sigh of relief.
Outside it's cool and just getting dark, and I realise that a long quiet walk is probably just what I need to shake out the black feelings of doom that are squatting in my head. The air is soft and silky, and it's not late enough yet to be worried about Bringers. Even so my ears are on red alert, and I nearly jump out of my skin when Spike says something right next to me.
"S'nice night."
"Jeez!!! Don't! Why do you do that?!"
I can't see his face in the dark too well but I'm guessing he's probably smirking at me again, really enjoying just scaring the crap out of me.
"Couldn't you just...you know...clear your throat next time or something?!
He doesn't reply and, annoyed, I start to walk away. I expect him to head off now in the direction of the cemetery, but instead he just keeps pace with me. His legs are about the same length as mine, but his strides must be longer or something because it feels like he takes one to every three I do. He doesn't seem to notice that I'm walking faster and faster though and I start to think that, for a supposedly perceptive vampire, he can be a real jerk sometimes.
"Don't you have somewhere else to go?"
And again, I don't mean to sound so damned snippy with him, but well, he's being Spike. He gets it at last though, stops walking and lets me go on ahead.
He makes me mad a lot of the time, and that's always made the being scared of him sort of fade into the background. But even before he got his chip taken out and got his soul back, he'd say something dumb or incredibly tasteless and I'd completely forget that he wasn't just a normal guy. I mean, I get where Xander's coming from and everything, but it's hard not to forget someone's evil when they're hanging around with your friends the whole time and talking about stuff. A lot of the time he can be pretty good company. He's been around for over a century so there isn't a knock-knock joke he hasn't heard, and he knows more about demon languages and the whole history of evil than even Giles, although more from the other working end of course. He's never very big with the details, but if you ask him the right questions and he's in just the right mood, he'll tell you pretty much anything.
Besides Tara kinda liked him. I always think that that counts for something.
The lights of the 7-11 are all glowey and warm yellow up ahead, and I realise when my tummy sends up a Hellmouth-worthy rumble that, what with the the heapin' helpings of self doubt, I haven't actually gotten around to eating anything today. And I can't see them yet from where I am, but I'm pretty sure at this moment there's a jumbo-size microwaveable taco in there somewhere with my name on. I've almost got it in my sights, when a shape lurches forward out of the shadows and grabs for my arm.
"Willow!"
O.K, and that means that my nerves are pretty much shot, because without even thinking about it I've thrown up a barrier that sends them half way across the parking lot. It takes me a couple more seconds to realise what's happened though before I move to go help the person up, but when I start to, I stop when I see that it's Amy. That takes me a moment or two as well of course, because she doesn't look an awful lot like the Amy I saw just a couple of weeks ago. Her hair is hanging round her face in kind of thick black clumps, and her eyes are all wide and glassy as if she hasn't slept for a month.
"Amy. Hey."
That's all I can manage, but she's sort of taken me by surprise. I'll probably think of something more cutting later, but right now that's the best I can do. I turn around to go inside.
"You have to help me!"
OK, and now she has my attention again because;
"And no, I really don't."
I try to walk away, but this time she's not letting me go so easily. I try to send her backwards again with a another heavier-duty version of the same spell, but she flicks it away like it's pixie dust. Her hands on my wrists are like claws, and I suddenly get that all the black stuff on her cheeks and in her hair isn't dirt. It's blood.
"Listen to me Willow. You have to listen to me! Something's coming!"
She's freaking me out a little now and, almost without meaning to, a crackle of magic flickers out of me and down to my fingers. I stop it almost as soon as it starts, but Amy's eyes go wide as she feels it and she grabs on even tighter.
"No, don't stop! You have to give me some."
Her eyes close and I recognise a look on her face that I've nearly forgotten, that I hope I'll forget. She's hungry, and giving her a taste of magic like I just did was like giving an appetiser to a starving man. Her hands grasp at thin air as I start to back away, and for some reason I'm suddenly reminded of this part in a movie I saw once; when a leper woman tries to touch Jesus' cloak.
"Stay away from me."
She's on her feet again, and suddenly she doesn't look pale and weak any more. She pushes back her hair and I see a flash of the old evil Amy behind her smile.
"Here I come. Gonna try and stop me, witch?"
She starts towards me and I concentrate on finding the light, the positive energy I know is there somewhere but somethings blocking it, must be blocking it, because all I can feel is blackness. Darkness is coming off her in huge, rolling waves and every spell I know is suddenly gone from my head. Amy's voice is soft and loud all at the same time, and as she leans in to speak to me I feel like I've been paralysed.
"You can't stop me though can you? You can't stop anything. They all think you can but you can't."
"What are you doing?"
I know she's not as strong as this. She's not as strong as me, but somehow she's pushing me down to the ground.
"Just taking what you don't need."
Her hands are fastened around my wrists like steel and I can feel something else now. She's trying to pull something out of me. Her eyes are jet black.
"You have all this...power, Willow. And you've got no use for it."
She's smiling and I see the magic crackling blue and purple as she drags it out of me. Her breathing is shallow and rapid and I realise that mine is too, that I'm feeling everything she's feeling. Terror and blackness and everything she's seen and done, everything that's been done to her. The faces of Bringers with their scarred eyes, a curved knife, and then something else. A man's face, handsome and at the same time, cold and cruel. Pure evil. His hand coming up to her face with a smile.
"You won't be able to stop him, no one can. So you might as well...just..."
"Just give it up, love"
A sound like a whip-crack and just like that, it's gone. The sickening blackness and the pain and her thoughts in my head, and suddenly she's lying on the ground ten feet away, her eyes still jet-black and wide as saucers. My head's still spinning though, so for some reason I don't get straight away that her mouth is bleeding at the corner because she's just been hit. A hand reaches down in front of my face and I look up to see that it's Spike's.
"You want to be careful who you stop and pass the time with, pigeon. Some nasty types hanging around down here at night."
He shoots a quick glance over at Amy, but she's crawling away now on her hands and knees, looking every bit as pathetic and weak-looking as she was a few minutes ago when she first grabbed me. I let Spike help me up and then I just stand there wathcing her go. Quietly, he brushes the dirt off my coat with the flat of his hand.
"Don't worry about it. Don't reckon she'll be coming back for seconds."
He sounds so calm that I think maybe he doesn't realise what's just happened. I stare at him as he bends down to pick up the hat I was wearing that's dropped to the ground.
"She was trying to..."
"To kill you. Yeah, noticed that."
He puts the hat back on my head, squints, and then straightens it.
"Wouldn't hold it against her though, pet. People do weird stuff when they're hopped up on magicks."
"I know!"
I mean I do know that.
"But she did something to me. I couldn't stop her. I felt as if I was....like she was turning me into something else. Like everything inside me was...evil again."
I swallow, because I suddenly get that I came so close and never even saw it coming.
"God, she was taking everything from me and it was all....all bad. There's so much....evil still left in me."
I look at Spike, and Spike looks back.
"Evil's in everyone. You and me, we just know her better is all."
"Her? Evil is a her?"
He glowers at me, narrows his eyes a bit.
"Him then. We've seen him up close, got his number. Why do you think he wants us out of the picture so badly? He knows we can do some damage."
I think he's right, but I don't say so. I just let him dust me off some more, and I watch as Amy finally gets to her feet on the other side of the parking lot and limps away. Spike looks up, sees where I'm looking and gives me a shove. Not very hard but hard enough to remind me of something.
"Spike. Can I ask you a favour?"
"Depends."
He looks wary, and for a minute I forget he's a vampire. I forget about both the times he's tried to eat me, all the times he tried to kill Buffy and the time he tried to help Adam to. I even forget that sometimes he can be unfeeling and completely tactless and about the stupidest jerk I know, and I give him the biggest dumbest tightest hug I know how to give. His back goes stiffer than Giles' does, and when I finally let go his eyes are so narrow they're almost slits. I look at Spike and Spike looks back. Scuffs one foot in the dirt and clears his throat loudly.
"So what? Not got enough for a taco then?"
"Need about another fifty cents."
He drops the coins into my hand, stops. Picks out a shirt button.
"Give us a bite and we'll call it quits."
I blink, stare at him and he sighs.
"Of the taco you silly bint."
"Oh. Right. Sorry."
And then sometimes, I can pretend that he's just a normal guy.
