"But if you hurt what's mine
I'll
sure as hell retaliate"
- Massive Attack
After Willow ran off Tara slumped to the floor, leaned her back against the doorframe and closed her eyes. She heard her girlfriend's footsteps disappear down the hall and fade; the walls were thick in this house. For most of her childhood, that had been a source of comfort, something that made it possible to sleep; none of the screams got in, and none of the sobs got out. Now it felt like a curse – anything could be happening to Willow just downstairs and she wouldn't hear it, wouldn't know, wouldn't be able to help in any way. She couldn't handle that. She had to do something.
Crossing her legs and straightening her back, Tara tried to focus. She'd read lots of different protection spells over the years; some which were supposed to work, others which had not worked for centuries... she was too upset to recall any of them word for word, but of course magic didn't work in this house anyway as long as her mother's curse was still upon it, and as far as Tara knew that hadn't changed.
But maybe prayers did.
And so she improvised, mixing in bits and pieces of protection spells while calling on any reasonably benevolent Goddess she could think of – Isis, Artemis, Freya, Demeter, Minerva, Lakshmi... praying, pleading, begging, demanding, promising to do anything; to sacrifice, to give back to the Earth, even to take care of her family forever... just as long as Willow was safe from harm tonight.
Dawn awoke from unconsciousness slowly, as if drifting up from deep underwater. Even after she was fully awake, it was a long time before her shell-shocked brain remembered how to move her muscles. She looked at her surroundings; a dark basement, reeking of things she didn't want to think about, all sorts of junk strewn around... she wasn't tied up, but the door looked pretty tough. And of course, in one corner, there was Giles hunched over Willow's body. Dawn watched them for several minutes before she spoke. "Is she alive?"
Giles had checked Willow's pulse at least a dozen times in the first hour after they threw her in with him and Dawn, but in the last two hours he hadn't dared to. Now he steeled himself and once again put his fingers on her neck, breathing a sigh of relief. "She's fine." That was a lie, of course; apart from the very faint pulse, the hardly noticeable breath she'd draw now and then, and the steel grip she still held on a small bloodied object in her hand, Willow lay perfectly still and might as well be...
"She doesn't look fine. She looks dead." Dawn's voice was oddly flat when she scooted over to Willow's side. Before Giles could stop her, she lifted the blood-soaked shirt he'd wrapped around the deathly pale redhead's belly. "Yup. Dead. No way she'll survive that."
Giles couldn't really
disagree; after all, he could see right into Willow's innards, she
had lost a huge amount of blood and he honestly couldn't understand
why she hadn't died hours ago. Still, part of him wanted to scream at
Dawn for speaking so bluntly; while he'd been keeping watch over
Willow, doing all he could – which wasn't much – to keep her
alive, that... THING masquerading as Buffy's sister had just been
lying unconscious in a corner. And to add to his grief and confusion,
part of him had been just as afraid for her as he was for Willow;
after all, he had five years' worth of memories of Dawn growing up,
and knowing they were false didn't mean they felt any less real.
Until three days ago, he'd thought of Dawn as one of
his
(children)
charges, and as much as the Watcher in
him wanted to look at her objectively as just another mission, the
man in him couldn't. He bit back on his angry reply, gently
re-dressed Willow's wound and then turned to Dawn. "How are you
feeling?"
Dawn was still staring at Willow as if looking right through her, and now she hugged her own knees and rocked gently back and forth. "She's always taken care of me, Giles. My whole life. I was always so mean to her and she always took care of me and I-I was yelling at her and telling her she was going to get us killed and then I ran away and now she's dead and it's all my fault and I couldn't help her and she's dead and now we're all-"
"Dawn... what are you talking about?" Giles put his hands on the teen's shoulders to try and soothe her before she became completely hysterical. "She's not dead. We need to get her to a hospital soon, but if she's made it this long I'm sure she'll be fine." He took Dawn's hand and placed her fingertips on Willow's neck. "See? She's alive."
"Not her. Buffy." Dawn looked as if she had just had to explain to him that 2+2 equals 4. "Buffy's dead."
For the longest while Giles
just stared at her. "No." He shook his head. "You're
lying." He'd seen Dawn tell lies enough times
(no you
haven't)
to know that she was telling the truth now, but he
refused to believe it. "You're LYING!"
If Dawn felt him grabbing her harder and shaking her, she didn't show it. She just kept staring past him, sobbing and almost giggling with terror. "Big chainsaw. Wrrooooom. Can't get any deader than that. She screamed, Giles, she screamed, it hurt so bad that she screamed and I couldn't help her, I ran..."
If there had been any doubt in his mind that Dawn was telling the truth, he knew now. Maybe he'd known on some level ever since he and Willow heard the scream last night, but... before he realized what he was doing he had slapped Dawn. He wanted to hurt her, to expose her for the lie she was. "Shut up. Shut up. You don't get to... you're not even... you're just..." But when he looked into her shocked eyes he couldn't bring himself to say it. As it turned out, he didn't have time anyway.
"Spare the rod, spoil the child." They both looked up to see Tara's father standing in the doorway, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands and looking like he hadn't slept a wink; hair on end, murderous calm in his bloodshot eyes. "Glad to see you at least know how to discipline your daughter." He pointed to Willow. "She still alive?"
Giles judged the distance to the door; no way he could get to the man before he had time to turn the gun on him. "Yes."
"Good for you. That means you get to live until she's out of the woods, and you better pray hard she makes it. I take no pleasure in killin', there's just some things you gotta do, don't mean you have to like it..." Mr Maclay spoke through gritted teeth, but then his composure suddenly vanished as he pointed to Willow, his face a mask of grief and fury. "But that little WHORE killed my SON! As if it wasn't enough for her to corrupt my daughter... dying's too good for her! As God is my witness, she's going to suffer for a long time before I put her out of her misery and send her to the hell where she belongs!" Calming down somewhat, he turned to Dawn. "As for you, though, young lady... we were going to keep you. Donnie is... was looking for a wife, and he thought you'd make a good one. Of course, now that he's... he's... we don't really have any use for you. BUBBA!"
The doorway darkened as Leatherface entered, a sledgehammer in his hand. His father pointed to Dawn while keeping the shotgun aimed at Willow and Giles. "Kill her."
Seeing Buffy's killer coming towards her, Dawn lost it completely. She scrambled madly backwards on all fours, screaming, pleading and whimpering, unable to form a coherent thought. Leatherface raised his hammer... and then stopped and lowered it again, as if confused.
His father cleared his throat. "Bubba, you know I don't like repeating myself." Leatherface answered in an anxious stream of gibberish that only served to anger Mr Maclay further. "What do you mean 'pretty green glow'? KILL the little bitch!" He walked up to Leatherface and slapped him hard. "I thought I'd beaten that nonsense out of you years ago. As long as you're under my roof you live by my rules, and when I tell you to kill, you kill!"
Leatherface cowered and didn't meet his father's stare, looked at Dawn as if in awe and still refused to go any closer to her. Furious, Mr Maclay slapped him again. "You're useless! Get out of here, go make dinner or something. I'm ashamed to call you my son." As Leatherface slinked out of the basement, his father cocked the shotgun and pointed it at Dawn. "That's family for you, always a disappointment. If you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself."
But he had taken his eyes off Giles. And when the Brit got to his feet, it wasn't as a Watcher trying to protect a mystical Key; Watchers aren't supposed to be soldiers or bodyguards, not supposed to throw themselves in front of guns. Watchers take care of their Slayers, teach them, keep them in the game until they die, and then their job is done.
A father's job, on the other hand, is never done as long as one of his children is alive, and adopted fathers are no different. Giles tackled Maclay head-on. Dawn kept screaming as the gun went off and she was splattered with both men's blood.