Anya didn't think it was very fair, the way she was being treated.
She was Anyanka, champion of mistreated women, a thousand years of enough torture, punishment, and evisceration experience behind her to frighten any being. And yet, here was Halfrek telling her she was a joke at the office.
A joke? She'd seen hundreds of fledgling demons try and fail to make something of themselves. D'Hoffryn had given her 'employee of the century' eight times in a row. How dare they mock her name. She'd been on top for decades before her little Sunnydale High romp, Cordelia Chase had just gotten lucky. If not for Giles' meddling, Cordelia would have stayed vampire food and Anya would never have lost her powers and gotten into this sopping mess.
A busy waiter weaved between the tables, delivering hot mugs and collecting empty ones. Anya thought about what she could do to that man. Torture him in ways he couldn't imagine. Delivering pieces of himself in tarts and cupcakes to the women he'd wronged.
But Anya merely sighed. She just didn't feel like it, today. That seemed to happen a lot these days.
The measure and test of true friendship rarely appears, but when Anya found herself human and alone in the world, she discovered just how real her friendships were. No well-wishes or condolences on her recent mortality. No fruit baskets, no singing telegrams. Anya was left to scrape together a life out of what little she knew. Did any of her friends or proteges care that Anyanka, champion of mistreated women, lived for weeks in an abandoned gym office in a high school before finding a cheap, dank apartment?
Without her powers to protect her, the trials of living in Sunnydale proved too much for a weak teenager to handle by herself. Anya needed friends. She needed allies. How little she knew at first how different those two were. She'd quickly picked up on the fact that the only thing Sunnydale had going for it resided in the high school library in off-periods and after school. The Scoobies were meek and small and had more odds stacked against them than anything Anya had ever seen. And she had seen a lot. How could she know that only a few stupid, mortal years later she'd feel more at home with them than anywhere else she'd been? How could she know of the steely inner strength Buffy held behind her facade of nail polish and cute shoes? What hope did Anya have of seeing anything more than ancient detachment bred of Watchers toward their Slayers from Giles? The power that dwelt deep within poor, compliant Willow? Or how quickly foolish, useless Xander Harris would rile her bones and quake through her being?
How could she hope?
But now she was here, sitting on a stupid stool in The Espresso Pump, holding a long-ago-cooled cup of a generic coffee drink, stuck. Summer lingered, warm and salty, and made her wish for things to be different. Ha! The vengeance demon, wishing! Irony slapped her in the face once again.
She couldn't help it. She wished she didn't have to go home to her apartment and cook for one. She wished Buffy would look her in the eye and that Dawn didn't always seem so sad. She wished Giles hadn't left and that the Magic Box was still there. She wished Willow would come back and that Tara could be sharing this coffee with her instead of Hallie's empty companionship. She wished she still had a place in the system that continued to turn, blind to the disasters of its quiet heroes.
Instead, she was listening to bad folk music, which assuredly did nothing to improve her mood. Anya frowned, took a sip of her drink, and straightened her back. She knew the uselessness of hope and the foolishness of wishing. Ask any of the women she helped if when they saw their wish granted, they felt better. If it was what they truly wanted. If they could only have him back. If, if, if.
Enough wishing. It's time to do what we do.
Anya cocked her brow and looked Halfrek in the eye. "Fine. If the Lower Beings want something to talk about, I'll give them something to talk about."
This time, the terrible darkness spoke. It yelled, howled and dragged Willow from the grass and dew, far past the roots and into the deep.
It seemed like forever. But then came wind. And noise. And teeth. From the inky darkness, sharp and wet, the teeth glistened for her. "We're coming for you," they hissed. Willow cowered and covered her ears as a midnight storm blew around her. She fell to her knees while her hair whipped around her hands and face. But still the tempest raged, snarled, snapped, and roared. "We know her eyes are watching you, little Willow."
Willow choked. The deep-seated fear that always lingered grasped her mercilessly. The tears could come now, hot and firey in this cold, cold place. They knew. They always knew. Her sins. Her darkness. It would never be over. Not while Tara's dead face watched her from beyond. Willow knew no spell or weapon could defeat these demons. No matter how much magic therapy the Coven could teach her, there was nothing that could be done to save Willow from this fate. Of teeth and thrashing. It was what she deserved. Even Tara knew; even Tara saw.
"Did you think it would be that easy, a hug and some tears?" The sound was booming and everywhere. "Thing again, young one, because we're here. We're always here and soon, we'll be all that's left."
The din and wind coalesced in a massive cyclone that swept Willow off her feet and into its bowels. Powerless in its wake, Willow drowned. And drowned and drowned and drowned. She drowned in hopelessness. In fear. In worry. In nausea, and a sick knowing that was meant to be. She had relinquished herself to darkness once before - why should it not come claim her now?
In the storm, Willow succumbed, sunk into herself and thought of blue. While the teeth were grinding, Willow recalled the way Tara used to sigh into her pillow in the mornings.
The grinding stopped.
And how she used to close her eyes when she heard a birdsong.
The itching ceased.
The warm way she'd hug the laundry when it came out of the dryer.
The wind caressed.
Her face after a shower.
The dark turned grey.
The color of her lips.
The sound stopped.
Willow let herself think of red.
And then,
she woke.
"Oh, god."
But this time it was no slow, soft awakening. Willow jolted violently, electrocuted by the earth, and gasped desperately as if having nearly drowned.
Strong arms were cradling her. "Just breathe," Giles soothed.
"What happened," she managed to gasp.
"What do you remember?"
She thought back to the sweet but unexpected forgiveness. "We were talking, and I felt-" she recoiled from the ground and met his gaze with frightened eyes. "-I felt the earth, Giles. It's all connected." But none of it back to Tara. Just the evil to me. "It is, but it's not all good and pure and rootsy. There's deep, deep black. There's...I saw, I saw the Earth, Giles. I saw its teeth."
Willow felt rather than heard the certainty in his voice. "The Hell Mouth."
It's coming. "It's gonna open. It's going to swallow us all."