This wasn't happening, Buffy told herself. It couldn't be.
Things like this - like one of her friends receiving a blow that had been intended for her – only ever happened in her very worst and very frequent nightmares.
This was a new variation, though. Usually it was all dark, sometimes with rain and thunder, and there were demons or vampires. In her dreams she would fight with everything that she was worth to keep them safe, even though in Dream World it never worked. In her darkest dreams, they made her watch while whatever demon or vampire tortured Willow, Dawn Giles or Xander.
But then she'd wake up and everything would be semi-okay. She'd check Willow's room, where she'd be asleep, either wrapped up in Tara's arms or, more recently, on her own. Then, she'd watch Dawn sleep from the end of her bed, and scare the crap out of her when she woke up to go to the bathroom and see her crazy sister stood in the dark, looking like a stalker from a bad horror movie.
At lunch, she'd head over to the building site, and she'd tell Xander about whatever had happened in her dreams. He would laugh it off, and say 'the forces of darkness couldn't get rid of us if their lives depended on it. And they usually do.' Then he'd jump around, yelling 'we are invincible' at the top of his lungs, informing her that's what his favourite comic book characters usually did, and she'd laugh at him, call him a dork, and it would feel a little better.
When the sugar-rush had worn off, he'd tell her that after everything that had happened to them over the years, the Powers that Sucked would have to pull something pretty spectacular out of their hats to get rid of them now.
A good dose of Xander logic would usually quell her fears for the time being, and they'd sit at the very top of the scaffolding in their bright yellow hard hats and drink coffee and he'd scoff the candy bar Willow told her to always carry when visiting Xander, because she said it was fun to see how long it took him to sniff it out from its hiding place.
It was hard to believe that something so tragically mundane and relatively ordinary was happening on such a beautiful, bright morning in a world where the supernatural reigned, happening in a place she felt strongest, and it seemed bizarre to her that the only thing she really thought when she heard the shots was 'huh, so that's what a real gun sounds like'.
This was supposed to be a Slayer's favourite time of the day. When the sun beat down and the birds chirped happily in the trees like a scene right out a fairy tale. Although things had been hard for her in the past few months, Buffy had to admit that the morning held some kind of comfort to her. Everything felt...safe.
She wasn't stupid, she couldn't afford to be, and she wasn't forgetting the daytime slayings she had partaken in on regular occasions. Things didn't stop being evil by the light of the day, however much she wanted to believe it so. But when the sun was shining, she could fool herself into thinking that she was just another typical Southern Californian girl.
Nights were filled with demons and nightmares that pursued her, no matter where she was. Mornings were good, because it meant she had survived another night, and it meant her dreams would fade away with the early morning dew.
That wasn't going to happen this morning, though.
Blinking hard, Buffy knew this wasn't a dream.
And one look at Willow...that made her feel more useless and afraid and less like a Slayer than she'd ever experienced in her life.
Buffy wasn't sure if it was the tears at first. She thought that maybe they were clouding her vision, so much so that she was seeing things, and she hurriedly wiped her eyes with her free hand. But when she looked up from the face of her dead best friend, the man lying on the ground, and saw Willow, the girl's head back and eyes black as onyx, she knew there wasn't a mistake.
"Will..." she said unsteadily, carefully placing Xander's cold hand back on the ground like a piece of her grandmothers ancient china, something fragile and delicate, even though she'd always known him as anything but those things. "What's going on?" she asked warily. "What are you doing?"
Willow didn't respond to her, she just looked back down at Xander, shaking his still body gently, sobs catching her in her throat as tears rolled down her face. "Oh, god...oh, no..." she cried. "Please...please, come on..." she said, putting her hands to his face and stroking his skin with her thumbs. "Come on, Xander," she told him. "Please, come on, wake up..."
Buffy stood up slowly, the blackness in Willow's eyes signalling something that was definitely not of the good, and shivered when she felt a definite, unnatural change in the air, a disturbing chill that overcame the warm Californian sun that had been shining not long ago. "Willow, what are you doing?" she asked, backing away from where Willow still knelt at his body.
She couldn't do anything but look on as Willow's eyes focussed on the sky above them, unaware of anyone else and seeing something no one else could, as the world around them darkened to a midnight black. The few fluffy, white clouds that had been bobbing in the sky that morning turned into an unreal silvery mass, taking on a magical and surreal glow, increasing in volume and covering the sky, seemingly falling down on them and surrounding the yard and the house, while violent, bright silver lightening strikes sparked in the atmosphere.
"By Osiris!" Willow yelled into the air, the body of her dead best friend weighing heavy on her lap and her heart, "I command you, bring him back!"
"Will!" Buffy called, terrified, looking around her, looking for a way to stop it, looking for a way out as the clouds above her darkened still, swelling and growing as more lightening crashed through the air. "Stop!" she screamed at her. "Please..."
"Hear me!" Willow yelled again at the clouds, ignoring everything else. "Keeper of darkness!"
The clouds swirled all around Willow to form a huge, wizened old face, demonic in visage, appearing through and made up of the matter to settle above and in front of her, lightening flashing around the face as if it were either protecting or willing to kill him.
"Guys!" Tara yelled as she ran out of the back door, the handset from the cordless phone stationed in the kitchen in her hand. "The ambulance is on it's—" She froze as she reached Buffy, apparently not seeing what was happening until she saw the look on Buffy's face that was somewhere between devastation and terror, and she dropped the forgotten phone to the ground. "No," Tara said, almost to herself. "She can't do this..."
"Do what?" Buffy asked, glancing at her briefly but not able to completely take her eyes off Willow. "What is she doing?"
"Osiris," Tara said quietly. "She's invoking Osiris..."
"I'm guessing he's not the patron saint of hugs and puppies?" Buffy said.
"We have to stop her," Tara told Buffy, panicking now and rushing forward to put a stop to things. "Willow!" she yelled to her girlfriend, only to get no response and feel a strong arm pulling her back.
"Wait," Buffy told her. "What does this Osiris do?"
"He...He brought you back..." Tara told her. "I mean, there was an urn and a ritual and some other stuff...but he's the one who brought you back..."
"Witch!" the demonic voiced boomed from the face at Willow, catching Buffy and Tara off-guard so much they started and instinctively took a few steps back, the sound filling the air with a resonance and making the hairs on the back of the two girls neck stand on end. "How dare you invoke Osiris in this task?!"
"Please," Willow sobbed to him. "Please, bring him back."
Tara watched desperately, torn between her fear of the god and the fear of what was happening to Willow. "We have to stop her," she told Buffy.
Buffy watched the face, watched Willow, and looked at the body lying cold on the ground. "Why?" she asked quietly, her voice small and breaking with the tears in her eyes, making her sound so different to the Slayer she was on a daily basis.
"Why do we have to stop her?" she asked Tara. "I mean, if he can do this," she said. "If he can bring Xander back, if there's any kind of a chance...can't we let her try?"
"You may not violate the laws of natural passing," Osiris' voice boomed at Willow, looking more than annoyed at his invocation.
"How?" Willow sobbed to him, holding Xander's body tightly, as if using it as evidence. "How is this natural?" she asked.
Tara watched the display, crying for herself, crying for Buffy and, mostly, crying for Willow. She was in so much pain, could feel it radiating off her in waves, but she knew that she needed to let Willow do this. It went against everything she believed in when she was trying to stop her using the Magick before, but this was the only way she had a chance of keeping her. She didn't know what the consequences would be - and she was sure there would be some - but if she stopped her now, if she interrupted this attempt to bring back someone so vital to them, neither Buffy nor Willow would ever forgive her, of that she was certain.
So, she stood back, putting an arm around Buffy, feeling the Slayer trembling, and smiled wanly at her to assent her decision, because she knew she didn't want to hear that this might not work, didn't want to hear that this could make things worse. "Okay..." she whispered.
"It is a human death, by human means," Osiris told Willow, lightening still crackling around them.
"But I—" Willow tried, speaking between sobs.
"You raised one killed by mystical forces," he told her, his voice resounding around them furiously. "This is not the same. He is taken by natural order. It is done."
"No," she cried in devastation. "There has to be a way."
"It is done!" Osiris told her resolutely, not willing to brook any sort of argument.
Willow's face crumpled as the sobs continued wracking her body. "NOOOO!" she screamed, her mouth wide open. The moment the sound left her mouth, a shimmering column of energy shot from her maw, heading directly for the demon. He screamed in torment as her power hit him, completely enveloping him, until he disappeared in a final flash of lightning, leaving only the sounds of a rapidly approaching ambulance in its wake.
From what had happened to Osiris to where Willow was now, things had pretty much been a blur to her, but now reality was setting in.
She had obliterated a god, and she didn't even care.
She hadn't moved when the paramedics had arrived. Tara had met them in the street when she heard their approach, but something told Willow that part of the reason she'd done it was because she hadn't wanted to be too close to her and think about what she had just done.
She vaguely remembered the two guys in blue uniforms running into the yard, reeling off a million and one questions about what had happened, but she wasn't listening. She had just held Xander's body close to her, smelling the washing detergent on his clothes and gel he insisted on using in his hair, even though he'd already told her he hated his hair at this length and that he was going to get it cut back to how it had been last summer.
There had been a discussion among the guys about what to do about her, she knew that much, the two of them talking over her like she wasn't there, even though she knew she probably wouldn't have answered them anyway. They had wanted to get near him to check his vitals, but when they touched him she'd told them to leave him alone. She told them to leave him in peace and that she'd take care of him, like she had when they were ten and he had the chicken pox. She had made chicken soup for the first time in her life, and burned the pan so much that the soup had been awful, but the laughing at her had made him forget about feeling sick for an hour at least, so the soup-splattered walls had been worth it.
That was when they'd physically removed her from him, lifted her into the air and she knew that if she'd had the energy she would've fought back. But the forgotten bullet wound in her shoulder was making its presence felt, the pain making her feel weaker than she could handle, and she supposed that was when she had just given in and passed out.
She came to to find herself inside of the ambulance, irritated by the intravenous needle they'd affixed to the back of her hand, but she hadn't opened her eyes. She could hear them, talking amongst themselves, and she could feel Tara's hand on her own, but she couldn't face any of them at the moment. In her head she knew that sounded awful, especially where Tara was concerned, but, oddly enough, the thought didn't have much of an impact on Willow.
There were more things on her mind right now, like the plan she was silently formulating. Maybe it was the drugs they were pushing through her veins to sedate her and relieve the pain, or maybe it was the time out that the loss of consciousness had given her, but suddenly everything was so clear to her. She knew what she needed to do now.
She had considered bolting from the ambulance, making an elaborate escape, but she still had some rationality – at least, enough of it to know that she was hurt pretty badly and that it was making her weak. At least being at the hospital would help the physical pain, if not the emotional.
Willow silently breathed a sigh of relief as the sirens finally stopped screeching and the vehicle came to a halt. She felt herself being shuffled around, but with the pounding headache the wailing sounds had given her, she didn't care where she was going as long as it was quiet enough to allow her to think a little more about her next action.
The gurney crashed dramatically through the double doors of Sunnydale Memorial Hospital as it was taken out of the ambulance by the two male paramedics, eliciting the attention of more and more people as it glided across the polished floors brought back long-forgotten memories for Willow. It reminded her of when George Clooney was on E.R., when she'd make Xander watch the show with her every week with popcorn and ice cream in her front room. He had always feigned lack of interest, but she had seen him on the edge of his seat on more than one occasion.
They would have debates on the realism of the show, even though their eleven-year-old arguments didn't have much wealth behind their knowledge. Funnily enough, it was Xander who had been on the pro side of the argument, despite the fact that she had been the bigger fan. A few years later, when Joyce had been brought into this same hospital after being bitten by Darla, it had been just how they used to see on T.V. When things had calmed down, and they knew Mrs Summers was okay, they were walking to the vending machine in the sterile white corridor and he had simply turned to her with a huge grin on his face and said 'I told you so', and did the dance he reserved for only the most special of occasions.
"...We have a Caucasian female," she heard from a distinctly male voice above her, "name Willow Rosenberg, 21, GSW to the shoulder..." Willow heard one of the paramedics say, obviously relaying whatever information was needed to the female doctor who was rushing alongside them, pushing a stethoscope to her chest, the feeling cold and surprising on her burning, ruptured skin. "...Pulse is 100 and weak..."
"What does that mean?" Tara asked, trying to keep up with their hurried pace, managing to finally find a place at the side of the gurney. "Is she going to—?"
"You need to stand back, okay?" the paramedic who had been talking earlier told her as one lot of blood-soaked gauze was taken from Willow's shoulder and a clean one replaced it. "If you want us to help her out, we need some space."
"Willow?" she heard someone calling, someone whose voice she didn't recognise. "Willow?"
The voice seemed so loud to Willow, like it was purposely bellowing in her ear out of spite because the owner of said voice knew she had a headache. She thought of closing her eyes, only to realise that she had never opened them, but the bright, fluorescent light was infiltrating her lids and confusing her, and she was partially pleased to realise she'd had the sense to try and block everyone else out before, even if it didn't seem to be working.
"Willow?" the voice said again. "If you can hear me, open your eyes," it told her. "Willow?"
"Alright!" Willow yelled furiously, opening her eyes wide to look at the person who had been calling her name. "Quit with the yelling, I'm not deaf!" she told the young nurse in scrubs who shrank away from the glare she was receiving.
The doctor looked at Tara, her eyes softening. "She was shot?" she asked her.
"Y-y-yes," Tara mumbled out, reaching one of her bloodstained hands into the gurney to put a hand on Willow's arm, an action which made Willow pull away from her, eliciting a look of confusion from the other girl.
"Accidental?" the doctor asked.
"No," Tara said as she followed them into one of the trauma rooms they had been heading for. "He was definitely looking to kill someone. I mean, he didn't mean to hit Willow, but..."
"There was another victim," the paramedic interrupted. "Male, same age, shot right through the heart. He didn't make it. Coroners been called," he told the doctor.
The doctor looked back to Tara. "Do you know who did this?"
"Warren," Tara told her. "This guy who..." she shook her head. "Just this guy."
"Warren..." Willow said venomously.
"Miss?" Tara heard someone say, but still started when she felt a hand on her arm. "Are you okay, miss?"
"What?" she said quickly, half turning to look at the nurse who wanted her attention.
"There's a lot of blood," the nurse told her, gesturing to Tara's own hands and clothes. "Do you know where it's coming from?"
"It's not mine," Tara told her. "It's Willow's."
"Okay," the woman said. "Well, how about we go and get you cleaned up?" she asked. "It's best if we let these people get on with helping your friend," the nurse told her, trying to guide her away from the hospital bed Willow was now being transferred to without so much as a wince.
"No..." Tara began to argue as the paramedics left the room, seemingly having completed their handover. "No, I want to stay with her."
"You can't," the nurse told her gently. "We need to work on her, and we can't do that with you here."
"Please," Tara said pleadingly, putting a bloody hand up to her face, before realising at the last second what she was doing and awkwardly lowering it again. "Let me stay with her."
"You'll just be outside," the nurse told her, pointing to the hall outside the door. "There's a glass partition just there, you'll be able to see everything."
Tara looked from Willow to the window and back at her girlfriend.
"I'll be fine," Willow told her from her bed, her tone more annoyed and impatient than would have been expected from someone in her position, a tone that Tara couldn't recall ever hearing before.
"Okay," Tara told the nurse, allowing the woman to lead her outside of the room. She looked back at Willow. "I'll just be outside, sweetie," she called.
She heard machines buzzing and beeping around her as electrodes and patches were attached to various parts of her body, but Willow didn't have time for all of this messing around. She felt weak, yes, but she didn't need all of these people poking her with needles and prodding at her and yelling orders at each other when she had other things to be dealing with. Like Warren, for example.
"...She's lost a lot of blood..." she heard one of the nurse's say.
"Call the O.R.," the doctor said to someone else. "She's going to need surgery to remove this bullet."
"What about the bleeding?" another doctor asked, having entered the room a little while before. "We can't control it."
Willow felt someone touching the white shirt she was wearing, and she instinctively grabbed the hands. "Okay, stop," she told them. "Just...stop..."
"Willow," the doctor said, looking at her while trying to replace the padding at her wound with fresh gauze. "We need to hook you up to a machine so that we can monitor your heart."
My heart... Willow thought to herself. Xander doesn't have one of those anymore.
She could hear someone vaguely saying that there was nothing to worry about, that it was just a precaution, but she had had enough, and she felt her patience snap quickly and almost audibly. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, gathering all of her power from within herself and opened her eyes again. She balled her hands into fists, her eyes slowly blackening over, as the lights in the room flickered on and off as if with a massive power surge, the machines beeping loudly, more than previously, the rate speeding up and dropping unhealthily in a broken rhythm.
"What's happening?" the doctor asked one of the nurses, looking around the room in the erratic lighting.
Willow lifted her head from the bed, looking the doctor right in the eye with a steely glare. "Leave," she commanded her, looking around the room at the other staff. "Now."
Inexplicably, the medical staff that had filled the room, rushing around with their instruments and machines, filed out of the room without a single word as Willow managed to lift herself up, steadying herself on her elbows.
The doctors and nurses reminded her of the Lemmings computer game Xander had taught her how to play when they were younger, and she felt herself smile a little. He had loved the way that they just went everywhere together, blind following the blind, and he said it was just like him and Willow, and she had laughed. Of course, then he would proceed to kill them all in the most gruesome fashion he could find when he got fed up of having to control them all, and he'd said that it was a good thing there was only the two of them to worry about.
Not anymore... her thoughts reminded her and her smile fell again. He's gone now.
She grabbed handfuls of the starched hospital bed sheets in her fists as she struggled to sit up, straining herself, pulling on the linen and putting more and more pressure on her wounded arm, the pain worsening with each movement that seemed to take hours, and she felt her mind haze over, like someone had put something over her head and she was trying to see through it.
"Willow?"
Willow rolled her eyes, knowing the voice belonged to Tara, and she soon felt her girlfriends once comforting hands on her arms but realised that now they held none of the warmth they'd had before. She managed to throw her legs over the side of the hospital bed, leaving them dangling while she regained her bearings, taking in deep breaths to will her erratic state to stabilise. When she glanced at Tara - a quick, fleeting look - she saw eyes full of concern and worry and confusion.
"What's going on?" Tara asked her. "They just...they just left..." she said, looking back at the door.
"I know," Willow told her, feeling the blood still ebbing slowly from her body, and she caught a glimpse of herself in the bright, reflective steel instruments that had been left unattended at her side by the medical staff. She barely recognised herself, noticing the distinct difference between her usual porcelain complexion and the paleness that had come over her now due to the blood loss, accentuated by the blackness that her eyes still held. She hadn't really looked at Tara before, not really, but when she did, Tara's eyes widened when she saw her colouring.
"What did you do?" Tara asked, horrified.
"I don't have...have time for this..." she mumbled out, the pain and weakness taking their toll on her now, but still she tore at the patches and electrodes that were attached to her body, needing to get them off of herself and hearing the machines they were hooked up to whining in alarm. "I need to..."
"We need to get those people back in here," Tara said, starting for the door.
"No," Willow told her, grabbing her arm and stopping her, the commanding tone in her voice so strong she surprised even herself. "I just need..." She closed her eyes briefly, her eyelids fluttering heavily. "Here," she said, her tone changing back to Willow voice. "Take my hand?" she asked, holding out her shaking palm in front of her.
Tara did as she was asked, blood on both of their hands as their fingers intertwined, watching Willow uncertainly. "I'm not sure about—"
"Shush," Willow told her, breathing slowly and finding it hard to take in enough air to satiate her lungs. "Just close your eyes, and concentrate really hard, okay?" she asked quietly. "I just need to borrow a little power."
"This isn't right," Tara told her gently, afraid to raise her voice, the feeling strange and unusual to her.
"Maybe not," Willow said sadly, her eyes imploring. "But I can't stay here, in this hospital. Too many bad things have happened here."
"I don't know if I can," Tara told her.
"You can," Willow told her. "Remember the very first night we did any magic together?" she asked. "We were stronger together."
Tara seemingly thought about it for a second, thinking back to that night, the night she was being stalked by the Gentlemen, and she slowly nodded her head, even though everything about that night was ingrained in her mind. The first time she had touched Willow and known she would never love anyone else. The memory was still there, as fresh as if it had only been yesterday, and she knew she'd give Willow anything she wanted right now. "O-o-okay..." she said quietly.
Willow allowed her a little smile, the most she could manage right now, and she waited for the other girl to close her eyes before she did the same. She could feel her own power inside of her, waning before but now surging through her body with the connection to Tara's, making her skin feel like it was humming.
She slowly opened her eyes at the same moment as Tara, and together they watched as the wound in Willow's shoulder seemed to open a little farther. The bullet appeared as if from nowhere, floating in the air as the torn muscle and flesh repaired itself, knitting back together and closing like the object had never even broken the skin, the veins around the hole steadily transforming from ruptured black and purple to become invisible under her skin.
"There," Willow said, visibly stronger, her breathing coming more quickly now, making up for the air she had been lacking before. "Good as new." She lifted her hand and plucked the still-floating bullet out of the air, bringing it closer to her face to look at it. "It's so small..." she said quietly, before closing her fist around it, opening her hand a second later to reveal the bullet had gone.
Tara was dumbstruck, still looking at the place in her shirt that still bore the hole and the red stain, hardly able to believe what had just happened. "What...what just happened?"
"Magic," Willow said simply as she hopped off the bed with ease, no sign of any of the physical pain she had felt before. She ripped the needle out of the back of her hand, a spurt of blood appearing in the air, before the wound closed quickly.
Tara noticed that her voice sounded different, even though she seemed much like the same Willow she knew. It was flat, empty, not at all like it had been a few minutes before when she had been imploring the other witch for help healing herself, but then Tara suspected that Willow had been using that as a ploy to get what she wanted.
This was what she had been afraid of. The magic was changing her, and Willow didn't seem to notice, or to care.
"How did you do that?" Tara asked as she looked at Willow uneasily. "I didn't think you knew spells like that."
"Yeah, well, I knew a lot of things before," she told her. Her voice sounded like she was annoyed now, switching from grateful to bored, like engaging in conversation was a chore, glaring at Tara with something unknown beneath her stare.
She turned, ready to leave, eyes narrowed. "Before I had to give it up, to make everyone else happy."
"It wasn't to make us happy," Tara explained to her. "It was – is – dangerous, Willow. You were using it too much, you knew that, depending on it for everything."
"And that was bad because...?" she asked tensely.
"It was bad for you," Tara said softly. "It got Dawn hurt, remember?"
"I remember," Willow said. "But now I need it."
"For what?" Tara asked.
Willow didn't answer her, just glared again, before she opened the door, ready to get on with what needed to be done.
"Why did you invoke Osiris?" Tara asked her, stopping her in her tracks.
"You know why," Willow said quietly, her head dipping as she closed her eyes against the image of Xander flooding back to her. "To bring him back."
"And you seriously thought he'd do it?" Tara asked. "Gods like Osiris are fickle, Willow, we know that from all the reading we did when you wanted to bring Buffy back."
"And I didn't hear you objecting to that at the time," Willow spat at her.
"I was concerned about that resurrection spell," Tara told her. "But I knew it meant a lot to you, and there were a lot of different factors in that. Besides, Buffy's a Slayer. The world is better with her in it."
"The world is better with Xander in it," Willow told her. "But you can't understand why I would want him back."
"I do," Tara said pleadingly. "But it was different with Buffy."
"He still brought her back," Willow said, speaking through clenched teeth.
"Yeah," Tara said, "and look how well that turned out. You know how Buffy's been since she came back. We ripped her out of some kind of heaven and, however much we try and make up for that, we can't. She has to live with that everyday. You'd want him to go through that?"
"I had to try," Willow said, tears springing into her eyes as her face began to fall. "I had to do something."
"I know what he meant to you," Tara said gently, slowly walking towards Willow to comfort her. "But he's gone, sweetie."
Willow's face hardened, the tears pushed away, the resolve that she had before coming back in full force, and she started out of the door again.
"What are you doing?" Tara asked, heading after her as she briskly walked along the long hospital corridor.
"I need to get something," Willow said, without looking back.
"What do you need?"
"Power."
"Where are you going?" Tara asked, quickly trying to catch up with her, but not knowing what she would do when she did.
"To get it."
Anya could feel the wrath of Willow's fury like a knife to the gut, just as she reached up to one of the shelves behind the counter of the Magic Box. She doubled over in pain at the sensation, her arm clutching her stomach as she felt the air knocked out of her lungs and the items she had been restocking fell to the floor, the jars and bottles shattering loudly in the otherwise quiet shop.
She had been a Vengeance Demon presently for only a few months, but never before, even when she had her eleven hundredth birthday under her belt, had she ever felt a thirst for revenge such as this. What made it worse was knowing whom it came from.
She took a deep breath, not quite able to stand straight yet with her arm still across her stomach, not even bothering to pick up the broken pieces of glass that lay on the floor. She shuffled the few steps from where she had been standing to the glass counter, and rested herself there, placing her hands on the cool surface.
Suddenly, the door flew open, as if blown by some freakish gust of wind in the normally placid Sunnydale weather, and Willow appeared in the doorway, but Anya wasn't surprised. She watched as the other girl marched inside, the demon in her withstanding the urge to flinch when the lamps and light fixtures around them began violently exploding from the witch's very presence. "Willow," she said calmly.
Willow didn't even bother looking at her, totally unfazed and determined. "Where do you keep the Black Arts books?"
"Something terrible has happened to Tara, I know," Anya told her. "But you don't have to do—"
"Tara's fine," Willow told her, looking around the shop for the items she required. "I need power."
Anya came out from behind the counter, concern in her face. "What do you mean?" she asked her. "I can feel your pain, Willow, but if it's not Tara then who..." she trailed off as it dawned on her. "Xander..." she said quietly, almost afraid of the response.
"Yeah," Willow said snidely. "Xander." She turned around, saw Anya's face full of worry and anguish, and watched with a self-satisfied grin as the former-demon-turned-demon again teleported away, leaving the witch knowing that she had been right all of those times when she had warned everyone that when things went wrong between Xander and his girlfriend - like she always knew they would - she would go back to her old life.
The thought of him was enough to wipe the smirk from her face, but she refused to give in to her feelings. "Alone at last," she said to herself. "Now, if I were a book on the Black Arts, where would I be...?" Her eyes wandered around the shop until they came to rest first on the ladder to the loft, then to the shelves full of books on the level it led up to.
Willow gestured with her head at the items on the high shelves, a nod that would have been barely noticed, had she been in company. She silently berated herself for not realising sooner that they would be up there, thinking of all the times when Giles had forbidden her to look at them, especially in this past year since Buffy's resurrection, when he was sure to have warned Anya to not let her near them when he left again.
Suddenly, responding to her action, all the books on the loft level began to fly off the shelves, landing in a heap on the large round table in the middle of the shop where so many nights had been spent researching or studying. Most of the nights spent with Xander trying to make her laugh when no one else was looking and usually at a time when she was trying to concentrate. He had succeeded, of course. He always had, even when they were study buddies back in high school. But then, she'd always been a sucker for his cartoon character impersonations.
The last book landed on the heaped pile, bringing her back to earth with a nasty bump, the tomes nearly overflowing from the table, and opened to a middle page. Willow walked over to the table and looked down at the pages, full of the smallest writing and text from different, ancient languages.
Willow lifted her hands in the air and placed her palms on the text-covered pages. Her hands sank into the leaves unnaturally, covering her arms up to the wrist like it was liquid as she put her chin to her chest in concentration, her limbs melding with the book as the words began to drift off the pages and over her skin. The text covered her arms, flowing through her as it scrolled and curled under the sleeves of the blood-stained white shirt, moving over her chest, shoulders and eventually her face, the figures, characters and words covering her whole body.
She lifted her head, eyes blacker than they had ever been before, as the words moved across her face and up to her hair, turning the tresses a pitch black.
She calmly removed her hands from the book, the books pages now a blank canvas, and she smirked to herself. "That's better," she said in a voice that hardly belonged to her.