The group walked home through the night, and to Willow the air seemed abnormally still. Her friends watched her carefully, and she felt a little self-conscious under their gazes.
"But it'll come back, right?" said Buffy, "Like yesterday. You just had to recharge."
"No," said Willow, "It's different. It's not coming back. I can't explain how I know, it's just gone."
"I don't get it," said Xander, "When you took that Rack guy's magic, he died. When you took Giles' coven magic, he almost died. But here you are, walking and talking and very alive."
"I don't get it either," Willow muttered in a daze, "I mean, they tried to take my powers in England and it almost killed me. It must be something else. I don't think they have the power to do what I did to Rack, even combined. Has it always been this quiet here?"
"Hey, how do you feel?" Buffy said.
"Would it be weird if I said kinda good?" Willow said, "I mean, a little wobbly, but other than that… I don't have to think about holding it in. It's nice. Relaxing. It's not eating at me like when they bind my powers. It doesn't hurt; it feels nice."
"Don't get used to it," said Buffy, "We'll find a way to reverse it."
"Is this what you guys feel like all the time?" Willow asked, "You guys realize you're blind, right?"
"We're what?" Xander asked.
"I mean," Willow said, "I feel like… Goddess, it's like half the world is missing. You guys just walk around like this? And it's quiet and you don't feel the Earth and hear the bugs and voices and stuff?"
"I hear… crickets," said Buffy.
"I can't even remember anymore," said Willow, "It's been like that for years, before England even. I think ever since my first spell, it's been getting louder and louder and it just became normal. Goddess, I can't believe how much I missed the quiet!"
"Sad to hear it," said a voice behind them, and the three whipped around, "Because there's about to be some screaming."
It was a vampire, a young man already in his fang-face, with four cronies behind him.
"Well," said Buffy, "You're right about the screaming." She sighed, as though the quip forced its way from her throat completely out of her control. Her fist flew at the vamp's face, and, just as Buffy predicted, he did scream.
Two of the vampires came for Willow and Xander. Xander grabbed Willow's arm, but Willow stood her ground and held up her other hand on instinct, intending to send a fireball between one vamp's yellow eyes. But nothing happened. She realized, then, that she had no idea what to do against an opponent if she couldn't use magick. What did she do in high school? She got hurt a lot, she supposed – thrown into headstones and smashed under bookshelves. Everything they taught her about combat in England seemed to escape her now. She stood there staring, frozen, as the vampire lurched toward her.
"Willow!" Xander tugged her arm with all his strength and dragged her out of the way, urging her to run with him down the block, "What are you doing?"
She finally got her feet to start moving. She turned back—Buffy seemed to be struggling a little with these particular vampires. Everything in Willow's head was telling her to help. She could incinerate all five of them with a wave of her hand, couldn't she?
Her feet had stopped moving again as she contemplated this, and Xander dug his nails into her forearm, swinging her ahead of him onto the ground behind a mailbox.
"Welcome to 'normal people' slayage," said Xander, "Where our main strategy is 'run and hide'."
"But—"
"I think Buff needs some help," said Xander, pulling a stake and a cross from his pocket. He gave the cross to Willow, "I'm gonna see if I can't dust a couple of 'em. Hide here."
"'Hide Here'?" said Willow, "Xander, it's Willow you're talking to."
"Willow just almost got two fangs in her because Willow couldn't move her feet. Willow's gonna stay here so Willow doesn't get hurt."
Willow pouted, but when she looked at the tussle that Xander now ran to join, she was surprised to find she was struck with fear. Of course she could take a few vampires with her friends. She was fit and trained, knowledgeable and experienced, and she had done it before. But still the knowledge that she didn't have her magick paralyzed her, and so she cowered in fear behind the mailbox.
She felt utterly useless and searched the fray for a way to help. She counted only four vampires—but it occurred to her that she hadn't heard the signature woosh that indicated a dusting. So where was the fifth?
"Hey Little Red," said a gruff voice, the fifth in question grabbing her shoulders from behind, "Big Bad Wolf's here."
She rolled her eyes at the line, but she was still full of fear. He threw her to the ground and she landed painfully on her hands and knees. He pulled her back up and pinned her to the mailbox. She thrust her cross at him, but he knocked it easily from her hand, only wincing slightly when it burned him.
More than her inability to cast, what struck her most was that he'd snuck up on her. Normally Willow could sense a vampire—or any being, human or demon, for that matter. But now all she could sense was the chill in the air and the stench of blood on this vampire's breath.
He punched her in the nose so that it bled, then he ran his tongue up her face and Willow grimaced. Why did vampires insist on always playing with their food?
He looked at her in shock, then fear, when he tasted her blood. But when all she did was stare at him defiantly, he smirked.
"That's witch's blood," said the vampire, "I can taste the residue of powerful magicks. But looks like you're running on E, girl."
Willow rolled her eyes again, and finally finding her strength she socked the vampire in the face. "Not quite," she said.
He tried to hit her but she dodged. She kicked him in the side and broke free from his grasp. She could still hear Buffy and Xander fighting behind her, so she guessed she'd be doing this alone.
She got into a fighting stance, which always made her feel a little silly. She fought the urge to mumble something in Latin, which would look even stupider when the spell would fail to work. She fought the vampire quite formidably, but she was quickly growing tired and the vampire didn't seem phased at all. The fight from earlier combined with the shock of losing her powers had already sapped her energy, let alone the fact that, without her magick, she was just a normal girl and this was a superpowered demon.
As such, she was bound to slip up eventually. And, when she did, the vampire grabbed her around the chest and restrained her against his.
"What a treat," he said, "I haven't had a witch since Salem."
"Yeah right, like you were in Salem," she said. He pressed her harder against himself and she squirmed in his grip, feeling an awful lot like the girl Buffy had to save from a vampire when she'd 'seized the day' seven years ago. "Get off of me!" she cried. He put his hand on her face, tried to turn her head to the side to get a better angle at her jugular. She bit his hand with all her might, coppery, stale blood filling her mouth. He loosened his grip enough for her to turn back to face him. His other hand still held an iron grip on her arm, so she did the only thing she could think of: she spit the blood back in his face. "Blech!" she said, "God, that is disgusting."
"That's it, witch!" said the vampire. He swung her around and shoved her hard against a tree.
Willow sighed, cheek scraping uncomfortably against the bark, "Listen, bub. I didn't want to have to do this, but you've left me no choice." Then she screamed at the top of her lungs, trying to bury the shame eating at her: "Buffy!"
Buffy was just dusting the last vampire on her end, and she ran for Willow, "Will!"
A part of Willow hoped that Buffy would struggle with the vampire, just to preserve her own dignity, but the Slayer pried the vamp from Willow and staked him with practiced ease.
"Everyone okay?" asked Buffy, pulling Willow off the ground.
"Nothing broken but my pride," said Willow. She spat some blood on the floor.
"He knock a tooth out?" asked Buffy.
"It's his blood. I don't wanna talk about it."
"Aw, Will," said Xander, "We all have bad slays every so often. And if you're me, that's all of them!"
"I'll get over it," said Willow, "Actually… I kinda forgot what a rush facing death is. I mean, when you are the most powerful witch on the west coast there's not a lot that can get to you."
"I think we all have a little bit of a death wish," said Xander, "Isn't that why we started hanging with Buff in the first place?"
"Haha," said Willow.
"You feeling okay still?" said Buffy, "Magick-wise?"
"Yeah, I think," said Willow, "Usually, after a fight, I'm wired, and I've got all this leftover power that I gotta get out, and I don't really feel like myself for a few hours. Now I'm just running on adrenaline and I feel great! I'm exhausted and I don't even have a headache or a nosebleed or–" she touched her nose, "Okay, well that's only 'cause I got punched. And you know what? I got punched! You know the last time a vamp's got close enough to me to punch me? Usually they're ashes before they can even quip! Buff, I'm a damsel again!"
Buffy frowned. She thought Willow seemed a little too comfortable with all of it. It worried her, how quickly Willow could accept losing such a big part of herself, and something was telling her that, despite what Willow said, her friend wasn't going to make it out of this unscathed.
When they got home, Willow wandered absently to the couch and collapsed onto it. Buffy touched her cheek, but Willow felt numb when she could barely feel a whisper of the strength and passion the Slayer normally gave off. "I'm just tired, Buff," Willow muttered.
"We'll get your powers back," said Buffy, "We just need a plan."
Willow was awakened a few hours later by Buffy creeping past her room—the slayer must have carried her to bed when she'd fallen asleep.
"You get in touch with Giles?" Willow asked, stopping Buffy as she passed in the hallway.
"He didn't answer," Buffy said, "Don't worry. We'll figure it out."
"Maybe… we don't have to."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, it's not like I deserve my powers. It's not like I can control them. If Amy and Catherine can take them away from me without killing me… maybe we should let them."
"Don't say that. You've made yourself better. They have no intention to."
"But I like it, Buffy," said Willow, "I finally feel like a person."
Buffy sighed, "Remember when the Watchers took away my slayer powers?"
"Uh-huh."
"It sucked. I felt weak, broken. Empty."
"But I don't," said Willow, "I feel fine, really."
"Let me finish," said Buffy, "I finally felt like a person, too. But I didn't feel like Buffy. I don't care if you're a person. I want you to be Willow, and until we get a Giles-backed confirmation that this isn't gonna kill you, we're looking for a fix."
Still, the next day saw Willow heading to class like usual, and she felt numb but functional. In fact, she felt energized, embracing the numbness as a sort of freedom. It was easier to focus on the words of her professors and the notes in her notebook without the constant cacophony of energy swirling through her brain. It was like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She ignored her different colored pens and took her notes in plain black.
Still, she felt empty and strange, and most of all inexplicably lonely. The whispers in her mind no longer egged her on, and she felt like she'd lost something even deeper than her powers. But that loss was small in comparison with her newfound freedom.
The drive home was longer than usual—Willow kept making wrong turns.
As such, she was the last to arrive for the research session. Dawn had already returned from school, and Xander from work.
"How ya feeling, Will?" Xander asked even before she was fully inside the house. She could see that worry was etched into the faces of all her friends, and she felt almost guilty that she was the only one relatively unconcerned.
"I feel kinda great," said Willow, "Like I can finally breathe."
"Really?" Buffy watched her with a critical eye, "Cuz Will, you look terrible."
Indeed, there was a worrying gauntness to Willow's face. Dark circles hung beneath her eyes and her skin was so pale that Buffy could see her veins despite the lack of magick running through them.
Willow blinked in surprise, "I do?"
"Yeah," said Buffy, "Sit down, you look like you're gonna keel over. Better yet, lie down. We checked Amy's house today. And her dad's. Anya did a locator spell but it wasn't strong enough. Giles isn't picking up. So kinda dead ends all around… but as long as you feel okay…"
She certainly didn't feel ill—or, if she did, perhaps it was simply still preferable to the feeling of having her powers and so she didn't notice. Or did she just assume this was what people felt like when they weren't filled with magick, and so she mistook illness for averageness?
"I feel weird," Willow admitted, "Breathing feels wrong. I feel kinda empty. I think I'm just not used to it." She paused, "I don't need to lie down. I know spellbooks more than anyone, I'm gonna research."
"We'll fix it, Will."
Willow smiled a little, but it felt wrong, too. She cleared her throat, which turned into a hacking cough. Her friends stared at her. "I'm fine, guys."
There was a solid hour of quiet research, and as the adrenaline from the day's activities dissipated Willow did start to feel a little under the weather. A lot under the weather, actually: when did she start feeling so sick? The words she was reading blurred before her eyes, head clouded by a migraine she'd hoped would be a thing of the past with her magicks gone. Suddenly, she saw red splash against the pages of her book. She was confused for a second, but she'd been prone to nosebleeds ever since she started practicing and she quickly brought a hand to her face, blood spilling over her fingers. She felt her lunch coming up, too, and she excused herself to lose it in the bathroom.
As she walked past the front door, its bell rang. The timing was so perfect that, had she not lost her powers, she would have thought that she caused the noise herself. She stopped to open it.
And there on the other side was Giles. She couldn't have been more relieved to see his warm smile if she'd tried. He opened his arms, as if expecting a hug. Willow sought to give him one, but moving one foot forward the ground seemed to tilt beneath her. Overcome with sudden weakness, her legs buckled and she fainted, collapsing into his arms with no trace of elegance.
