Fury by SLynn

Notes:  Thank you again and again for not hating me forever in my delayed postings.  I'm trying hard to stumble on here.

Chapter 10:  Confuto

Chaos.  It was absolute chaos. 

Willow and Tara had arrived as soon as they could but it was too late.  From the outside they knew it couldn't be good, the door to Giles' apartment was completely gone, but they'd held out hope.  Maybe they'd been mistaken.  Maybe it would be different.  And it was different, yet the same.

By the time they'd arrived Constance was gone.  And so was Xander.

Willow and Tara had found Buffy and Giles unconscious.  Worse still, when they both did finally come too, there was just no understanding them.  Literally.

When Giles and Buffy woke up it was like they were speaking Greek.  Well sometimes Greek, sometimes Latin.  Sometimes it even sounded a bit Russian.  Regardless, whatever they said came out odd and garbled.  And despite the fact they had both obviously been cursed with the same spell, they couldn't even understand each other.

It took a good ten minutes just to calm them down.  They were both trying so hard to let the other two know what happened and were clearly frustrated at the turn of things.

Eventually Giles tried writing and in many ways that was worse.  He sat with pen in hand for a few minutes and then just shook his head.  Whatever Constance had done had been strong.

The only way to communicate was through head nods, which was painstaking and slow.

Willow would ask a question and Buffy and Giles would either nod or do nothing.  The spell went so far as to limit there motions and usually the nods they did manage were more like head rolls.

After fifteen more minutes and only really learning that Constance had come back and had taken Xander with her, both things they knew, Willow and Tara were at a stand still.

"What did she do to them?" Tara asked in disbelief.  She'd never seen anything so strange.

Willow thought she had an idea, but wasn't sure.  Giles undoubtedly knew where the answer to their cure would lie but could not tell them.

Giles continued pacing the room.  Since being revived he'd tried again and again to let Willow know how to counter the spell.  It had been an easy one, easy and complex all at once.  Much like the results.  She'd taken away their ability to communicate.  He knew the spell, had used it before, and the typical duration was about three hours.  But they didn't have three hours and they certainly couldn't go after Constance like this.

Of course, there were ways of getting past the spell.  Tricking it for lack of better words.  It worked solely on one's power to communicate.  Stronger versions also took away your power to understand and be understood.  This one wasn't as strong.  It was clouding his thinking, a bit, but not heavily.  That was good news.  Constance had shown such a show of strength on arriving. The she leaves with this as a parting blow.  That was something in itself.  He'd expected to find himself disemboweled.  Or worse.

The key to getting past the magical elements of the spell was to not think about it.  The more you focused on the fact that you can't communicate the worse it becomes.  You won't be able to speak or write, as he'd tried when he was panicked, but there are other ways.

Giles cleared his mind.  Concentrated on the task and did what was necessary.  He saw the only thing he could use to relate the problem to her.  It wasn't much, but it should at least point Willow in the right direction.

Willow, of course, was some what surprised when without warning Giles placed a book in front of her.

She looked at the book and then looked up at Giles in disbelief.

"'The Loss of Virtue:  The Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America'.  Giles, do you really read this stuff?"

Giles turned away in frustration.

"I think he's trying to tell you something," Tara said.

"Moral confusion?  You think I have moral confusion?" Willow gasped.

Giles stared at her in disbelief.  He was beginning to think the room was spelled to cause everyone problems.

"Oh, Oh!" Willow finally realized what he meant, "Confusion.  She did a confusion spell.  That's easy enough.  Confuto."

One word and they were themselves again.

"We've got to go," Buffy said quickly heading for the door, "There is no telling how far she's gotten and we've wasted a lot of time."

"Buffy," Giles said, "we can't just do that.  We can't just go running after her."

"Why not?"

"For one thing, we don't know where she is."

Willow and Tara watched the exchange passively.

"But we know who's with her.  We can't just let her do…"

"We don't know what she's going to do Buffy," Giles said with real emotion, "She's less then predictable, that's for certain.  And Xander let with her willingly."

"He what?" Willow interrupted.

"It's not like it sounds," Buffy said in a tone that clearly indicated she didn't want to explain.

"So what do we do?" Tara asked since no one else seemed willing too.

And that was the real problem.  No one knew.

****

Upon waking Xander felt as if some deadly fever had finally broken.  He felt rested.  Completely and wholly himself.  But those feelings only affected his body.  His state of mind was something else.

He didn't know where he was and he didn't know how long he'd been there.

Last he recalled he was leaving with Constance.  Telling Constance he'd go with her, but where was she now?

The room, he could only assume it was a room, was dark.  It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust, but even then it was still hard to a make anything out.  Best he could tell the room was no bigger then ten feet squared, he sat on the only piece of furniture afforded it, a cot, and the door was just opposite of him.

Xander stood on surprisingly wobbly legs.  He'd almost lost his balance completely.  It only went to confirm his suspicion that he had indeed been out for some time.  Bending forward, hands to knees, he fought the brief wave of vertigo that passed over him.  In doing so he made another discover, his arm was now minus its cast.

Standing upright again he began to walk the floor.  Doing small circles around the edge, carefully avoiding the cot, he tried to think things through.

'Where was he?'

'Was this what Constance intended?  Was she just going to lock him up and leave him?'

Suddenly a terrible thought came to him.  It stopped him cold and his eyes flew to the door.

'What if she was playing her games again?'

As expected and right on queue, the door opened.

"I knew you'd be up.  Waiting.  Wanting answers."

Constance slid into the room and Xander backed up until he found himself backed up into the cot.

"Go ahead, have a seat," she said to him, and he found that he had obeyed her without really wanting too, "Good.  Comfortable?"

She didn't really want an answer.

"I was very upset with you," she began as she walked the room, commanding his full attention, "Very upset.  Angry Xander, and I don't like to get angry.  Oh the things I had planned.  Such things.  You couldn't imagine them.  It was going to make your last visit with me look like a day at Disneyland."

She paused, as she was apt to do, letting her words sink in.

"But, when it comes down to it, you and your friends actually did me a favor.  It turns out that sometimes you need a nice trip to hell to make you grow as a person.  And I've grown.  I've learned things Xander…"

She smiled at him and icy ran through his veins.

"I've learned so many things.  Not just about powers and magic, about myself."

She stopped and let it all sink in.

"And then you and your friends did me another favor.  You lifted the Furies curse.  Gave me a free pass home.  I was strong enough to come back before then, but the curse was such fun.  I didn't want to ruin it."

"You're lying," Xander said looking back at her.

"Such a tone," she laughed, "What makes you say these things to me?  I don't lie Xander.  Not to you.  It's true, the curse was nothing.  I could have lifted it myself and come back in a second.  Whenever I wanted too."

Xander just continued to stare back at her.

"It's true," she snapped suddenly losing her temper, but regaining it just as quickly, "Of course it's true."

Then she stopped cold.  Just stopped and stared.  Not really at Xander, but in much the same way as she'd done at Giles' apartment.  She just stopped talking and her face went blank. 

"Accusing me of lying.  And after all I've done for you," she continued as if she'd never stopped, "and all I'm going to do."

Xander tried hard not to show his surprise at what had just occurred but Constance took no notice.

"You see, I've wasted too much time on silly games.  I guess once you've lived as long as I have, you grow bored.  You have to entertain yourself any way you can.  You'll see what I mean in another hundred years, you'll feel it too.  No, sending me away was the best thing that could have happened.  It gave me a vision.  A goal.  I have aspirations again Xander, something I haven't had in a very long time."

Xander began to feel uneasy about the tone of her voice, the near ecstatic nature it began to take.  That and her inclusion of him in this.

"Now, don't think this doesn't mean you and your friends are going to get off easy for what you've done.  No.  You will be punished.  And they, well they'll get what they deserve."

"Please don't…"

Constance put her fingers to his mouth and stopped him from saying any more.  He shuddered at her touch, but she just smiled as if she hadn't noticed.

"I'm not going to hurt them.  No, I've thought of something much better."

She took a few steps back from him.  She wanted to really see his reaction.

"You see, I was going to come back, kill you all horribly one at a time.  At times I was going to start with you; at other times you were going to be the last.  I'll admit, every so often I just planned on destroying the whole damn town.  But it was just too petty.  Cheap.  I'm better then that.  So I thought it over, and I figured out the perfect revenge."

Xander didn't like where this was heading.

"You see, if I kill you they'd be upset.  They'd mourn.  Grieve.  But they'd get over it.  Eventually, they'd get over it.  If I kill one of them, same thing.  Sad but true.  And if I kill you all, where does it leave me?  Without vision.  Without a goal."

No, this wasn't good.  Constance, having never scored high on the sanity meter was now completely off the charts.  She'd changed alright.  She was twice as scary and four times as crazy then before.

"And my great vision," she said coming closer with each word until she was finally face to face with him, "my great aspiration is now to make you just like me."

****
A/N:  Confuto is Latin for: to check, repress, stop, halt, turn back/ silence.

The Loss of Virtue:  The Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America is an actual book.  I've never read it.  I'm not endorsing it.  I searched it out on Amazon and thought it would be funny.  For me it's just a plot point.  I'll probably get sued for this.

And my reference to Disneyland is an endorsement, not that they'd pay me, but I love the place.