Sudden Changes chapter 22

Willow blinked at the boy beside her, she couldn't seem to stop looking at him. He was familiar, yet unfamiliar at the same time. He was small, skinny; she recognized that; what she didn't identify with him was the black hair, the eyes, the blood.

What was going on?

"Kill him, mommy!" he yelled angrily. His black eyes erupted into flame; a familiar darkness radiated from him…the voice was familiar, but the tone…no, that wasn't…

…mommy?...

A million thoughts raced through her mind at that moment, she didn't understand. This was important…but all her thoughts kept going back to the rage, the grief…no, no, she couldn't go there. Not again.

There was only the anger, that was good…it was better than grief, the rage was numb and messed up…the grief was too hard…too cold. It never ended, she couldn't face it…she couldn't face anything outside the fog of rage and the desperate need for retribution.

A cry of pain wrenched her attention away from the boy who remained unknown to her grief/rage-fogged mind; all she wanted was vengeance; for everything to stop and be right.

She looked at Kinsey, he was covered in red and great, long sheets of skin hung from him like clean bed sheets draped over a cleaner's arm; she snickered in amusement as she stared at him through her too-shiny eyes.

She was playing with him, he was fun to play with. He screamed all the time, that was always fun. There was no fun without any screaming.

"Don't do it," warned Kinsey, blood trickled from his mouth. "If you do this you'll never be free…neither of you will!"

Willow smirked, she didn't care about that. Everything was gone now, she no reason to want to be free, nothing mattered anymore.

Then the door crashed open and a dozen or so people stepped into the room, they looked around the room first.

The grey-haired man, not yet seeing the monster shouted, "Hold it!" then his eyes widened as he caught sight of it. "Holy cheese, what's with the fish in the ceiling?"

Fish?

Then he looked at Kinsey, he seemed speechless at first and then sighed, "Oh, Kinsey," with a look of false regret on his face. The smug look in his eyes, however, showed her how much he didn't like this man. "Karma really has taken a chunk right outta your ass."

He smirked, looking oddly similar to hers, "Now, tell us, how does that feel?"

"Colonel," warned a woman that had short blonde hair.

The colonel sighed in annoyance, "Okay."

"Colonel O'Neill! You get me out of here, NOW!" shouted Kinsey, he sounded like he was going to continue talking but was cut off when he started coughing violently.

Colonel O'Neill didn't bother hiding a small grin; then he looked serious and slightly disappointed, "As much as I'd LOVE to see where this is going…"

"Chris?"

Willow reeled back as the name hit her ears; she looked to see who had spoken and saw a strangely familiar man walking closer to her and-

She looked at the small child blankly, she knew that she should know him, it was tugging at her frayed sanity. It wanted her to know.

To know what?

Kinsey suddenly shouted, "What're you FOOLS waiting for?!"

Chris bared his teeth, the front two were missing, and glared at the man with an expression of the utmost loathing, "Be QUIET!" he clapped his hands to his mouth after he said this.

It wasn't until they looked at Kinsey that they found that the old man's face was missing a rather vital part; his mouth. The skin below his nose was stretched tightly over his jaws, the fact that he was trying to talk was made apparent as the thick layer of extra skin stretched and then relaxed, before stretching again.

"Holy Hannah," muttered the blonde, wide eyed.

"Oh my god," said one of the nurses. "Look at- is that his SKIN?"

Xander moaned, "Oh, man. What is it with boys and their mommas?"

Willow looked at the boy and then at Kinsey, then to the group that had come crashing through the door. Something at the back of her mind was telling her something, she ignored it.

But what she couldn't ignore was her magic depleting a little, just like it had before; she growled and turned to the group, "What're you doing?!"

Couldn't they see this man needed to die? He was evil! A child-killer! Why were they trying to stop her?

Why wouldn't they stop her? They'd tried to when Tara had died, when she'd been shot by Warren.

Willow blinked, they tried to stop her from killing Warren and they failed; she'd been too quick for them. They'd seen her kill that murdering bastard, and they seen that she had felt absolutely…

…empty…

"What?" asked Xander, confused. "What do you think we're doing? We're trying to stop you making the biggest mistake of your life!"

Willow shook her head, she wasn't making a mistake! This was right, didn't he see that? "Stupid." She waved a hand.

Hit by an invisible force, they flew backwards out of the room; the door was slammed shut after them.

Or it would've done but the frame had been too damaged.

/Mommy!? You're taking too long, I'm doing it now!/ a familiar voice shouted in her mind.

The witch froze, it her fuzzed mind she could barely recognize his voice; didn't recognize him by look at all. But when his voice and mind touched hers she knew…

Buffy ran into the room, "Will, don't-

"Willow! Don't do this!"

Warily and very suspicious, she turned to him, "Who the hell are you!?" Was he there to stop her too? What right did he have to try to stop her? HE didn't lose a child, he didn't know anything! None of them knew ANYTHING!

"Daniel!" The colonel ran to the man's side. "Don't do anything stupid."

What was HE going to do?

The younger man, with the glasses, stared at her, "Not going to, Jack." He looked at 'Squidward' in the ceiling and grimaced slightly. "Nice pet."

She blinked, not smiling.

"Daniel," warned the blonde. "Careful."

What did he want?

"GO AWAY!"

Willow spun around and saw that the kid that had came teleporting in was now very angry; she frowned as energy crackled around him. He seemed so familiar.

/Why won't you kill him! He killed me!/ he screamed in her head.

Willow cringed slightly, killed him?

She could barely concentrate, all she wanted to do was to kill the son of a bitch that was tied to the ceiling; but something in her wanted to understand what was going on around her.

She didn't understand.

Kinsey screamed something, the skin around his mouth made the words come out muffled and unintelligible.

Chris glared at him, "You're a bad man! You killed them!" dark purple lightning crackled around him.

As the energy sizzled around him, stronger now, she noticed that it wasn't her friends that were sapping her power. It was…him.

Why? Her mind screamed for retribution, drowning out most of what she was trying to make sense of.

Willow stared into the boy's black eyes, stared and stared and-

Chris?

An illusion, it had to be; they were trying to stop her again! She wanted revenge and THEY were helping that bastard, no one stood in her way!

Even so, she couldn't take her eyes off him; he had to be fake…had to be. But then how could he drain her magic so much?

One part of her was screaming at her to deliver the punishment whilst the other part wanted to see into the child; the two sides snapped at one another as she turned to Kinsey.

She drew up her magic to deliver the final blast while she still felt the boy dragging some of her magic away from her and into himself.

"Willow!"

Just then, the bespectacled man ran up to her, "You have to stop this."

She cocked her head to the side, "Really."

He looked angry, and then jabbed at finger at the boy, "HE'S your damn son, Willow! You have to stop this NOW; I won't let you do this in front of him!"

Willow glared, "You're an idiot if you think that's gonna fool me." She looked at him….and blinked, his eyes looked just like…

"Fool you? No, this isn't like that!" he pleaded. "This isn't right; you're about to kill someone in front of our four-year-old son and I won't let you do that."

Son? Our?

She felt more of her magic drain away, she furiously went to take it back…

Then, she couldn't breathe, she just stared at the boy. She could feel the link between her and her son, it was stronger but…

It was tainted, dark magic streamed along the link that bound them together; the link that she'd created when she'd opened the telepathic connection between them as Chris had died.

He'd been dying as the link was established and when he'd slipped away from her he had grasped onto the connection cementing it temporarily between them; as he was in limbo, held there by the magic, the magic she was using had started healing him and, at the same time, had started corrupting him.

Filling him with her darkness.

The information buzzed through Willow's mind, the connection saying that he was alive suddenly started grounding her.

He was alive.

And she was killing him inside.

The man in front of her grasped her shoulders, shaking her slightly, "Don't let him do this!" he turned away from her and looked at Chris.

Huh? Him?

Willow looked at the man, 'Daniel' as Jack had called him, and she saw the connection. Not the magical connection…another sort of link between Daniel and her…

She blinked…her son…

"Chris?" she said staring at him.

The link, that looked like a long piece of silver string, was a three-way deal; one ran from her to Chris and then from Daniel to Chris. The link would run to her son because…well, because Chris was her son. He was a part of her.

So, then why would Daniel-

The realization hit her full force, she stared at him; her mind flashed back to the night she'd spent in San Diego, the night she'd spent getting completely plastered and the night she'd met HIM.

As Willow struggled to get to grips with all this information the link again flared and she once again felt her magic draining. Her head snapped to Chris.

"Bored now," the little boy said sounding nonchalant.

The meaning of those two words, the memories that went along with them, grounded her mind completely.

Guilt, self-loathing and fear almost suffocated her; as she struggled with them, as well as the events and revelations, she saw one of the most hauntingly-familiar things.

She saw her son raise his hand, saw him focus the magic on Kinsey. And for a moment she almost allowed it, Kinsey deserved to die for what he did; deserved to be flayed alive like Warren.

But she wanted Chris to come down; she wanted him the way he was before and she knew that that wasn't going to happen if she let him do this. She couldn't let him do this, it would kill him.

"Chris!" Willow shot an invisible, magical hand out at the energy that her son had released; she couldn't see it but she could feel it. She held onto it tightly and then concentrated on the link and her son; she dragged the magic from him and back into herself.

She couldn't let the dark magic control her son, she didn't want him to be like her. She was tainted by every dreadful decision she'd ever made; she'd brought all that on herself.

Was she going to let Chris suffer for what SHE had done?

No.

Willow froze, staring at him, and realized what she needed to do; a mix of horror and revulsion warred within her as she tried to find a way out of that.

"Willow!" yelled Buffy in sudden panic.

The yell barely registered before the magic she'd managed to absorb from Chris was yanked away from her sending waves of pain through her mind, she looked at her son and saw that he was sticking his arms out towards Kinsey.

No! Willow launched herself at Chris quickly and knocked him over, she made sure that she didn't land on him. He struggled fiercely in her strong grip as he landed on her, she landed on her back; then he opened his mouth and let rip with a scream that was akin to the sound of a hundred screeching banshees.

She cringed, gritting her teeth, as the noise assaulting her ears with a new intensity; she felt him struggle within her grasp again and then she felt, rather than saw, him magically expel several people from the room again.

Chris screamed again and waves of pain shot down her body, she knew that he was attacking her to get to Kinsey the way she had attacked Buffy and her friends trying to get to the Trio; she was losing him.

As much as she hated to it, loathed the very THOUGHT of hurting him, she pressed her hand to his tiny, bare chest and did what she had sworn she'd never to do another person again.

A golden glow wrapped around her hand illuminated Chris, the horrible expression of agony on his lightly-freckled face as she absorbed the magic he'd gotten from her.

Her heart shattered as his screams tore through her.

/I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-/ and the screams of remorse and horror flooded into Chris's mind as the magical connection created when he'd died closed for good.

She clung to his rigid body as the dark magic flooded into hers, again tainting her mind, her soul as it, for the third time, pushed her over the edge and into the dark embrace of her very own evil.

And this time she wasn't coming back.

Daniel cheered inside as Willow seemed to brake out of her psychosis; she was finally coming to her senses. He wasn't stupid, he knew that the prophecy that he'd translated was wrong, HE hadn't brought her down from her magic. Just the fact that Chris wasn't dead had done the trick.

But they still had to save Chris.

Daniel moved forwards quickly as Willow dived at their son; but before he made it to them Chris opened his mouth and his unearthly screams crashed through his eardrums; he skidded to a stop and clamped his hand over his ears.

"Whoa, that kid has a pair of lungs on him!" exclaimed Jack behind him.

Daniel stared into Chris's enraged black eyes, he tried to stay calm even as felt the need to just take a dive at those two and hope for the best; he knew he couldn't do that. He noticed at the corner of his eye that agent Grey was helping Colonel Franks and Captain Lionel out of the room.

Agent Grey, Lionel, Franks, the nurses and Teal'c were thrown from the room forcefully before the door slammed shut so hard that it had jammed into the broken frame; that door was going to be a bitch to open up again.

He looked back to Chris and Willow and knew he had to at least try to drag them both apart, a fork of purple lightning erupted from the two of them and struck the ground right next to him.

Another bolt would have struck him but Jack yanked him out of the way, the colonel was about to yell something when a wave of energy picked them up off the floor and threw them backwards.

He, Jack and everyone else who was still in the room- minus Kinsey- landed in an undignified heap on the ground, he rolled off Jack as he heard his friend say, "This is turning out to be the crappiest day!"

As Teal'c would say, He concurred.

"Willow!"

Daniel saw Buffy restraining Giles as he tried to run to the pair; he looked at the pair in question and he felt his face contort into the same horror that he felt tearing through him.

A glow emanated from Willow's hand which was planted firmly on their son's chest; he ran forwards as the boy's tortured screams were ripped from his throat.

Jack caught his arm and held him back as Daniel looked at Chris wide, unseeing eyes; he struggled to break free of his best friend's grip. Just as he was about to Sam grabbed his other arm, anger boiled inside him at, what he considered to be, his friends' betrayal.

"Daniel, stop struggling…just look!" yelled Sam into his ear.

He glared behind him, "Look at what?! My son being tortured!?" What the hell were they doing?

"My god," he heard Giles say as the room filled with silence.

He lessened his struggles as confusion caused him to stop and look at his surroundings, specifically at Chris.

"What happened?" asked Dawn shakily.

Daniel just stared at them both in bewilderment.

"She just absorbed the dark magic…" Giles continued to give out a vague explanation while Daniel just started walking towards Willow and Chris.

Jack and Sam had released him from their grips and were now following him; Daniel blinked and shook his head, "What did she do?"

Chris's face relaxed slightly before he sobbed once, then again. Tears streamed down the boy's face from his now-blue eyes, "Mommy….'m….hurts…."

Willow's arms were draped around Chris's chest loosely, her eyes were closed…

Daniel looked at the both of them, his son's now-red hair flopped away from his face, now devoid of the evil it had been full of not five minutes ago; grief welled up inside him as he knelt down beside them.

"God…" he struggled to hold back tears as he wrapped his hand around Chris's much smaller one; it was light, soft and…fragile. A deep contrast from the picture the little boy made; covered in congealed blood.

He flinched slightly as the previously-stuck door was ripped off its hinges, Teal'c emerged from the doorway looking ready to fight. Grey and the others followed him in, curiously they looking around the much-quieter room.

Daniel ignored them as the four year old looked at him; he just stared back at the kid and into the blue eyes that looked so much like his own, "Chris?"

"Willow!?" Xander suddenly appeared beside him, the younger man looked at the Willow and Chris. Then he turned to Daniel, "They both need help, now, c'mon."

Daniel turned back, "Janet!"

Just as Janet and her nurses ran up to them an exclamation from Chris quickly caught his attention, "Mommy!?"

Chris gripped Willow's shirt and pulled, "Mommy?" he pulled harder and then stopped, just looking at her, hands still clinging to the shirt.

Xander put two fingers to Willow's throat, just over her pulse, and concentrated.

Daniel pulled at the child gently and then said, "Chris, your mom needs help, okay. Now, you need to come outta the way so they can help her."

Suddenly, Chris let go and curled into a ball; Daniel scooped him up with difficulty because of the position the kid was in. Chris moaned in despair, uncurled himself and clung to Daniel, his moan turned into a wail.

"I…I…hurt mommy," wailed Chris, almost unintelligibly due to the crying. "I didn't m-mean to…"

Daniel hugged the boy as the arms wrapped around his neck tighter; he hated to see and hear Chris crying, it made him want to do something, anything, to make him feel better and be happy.

He barely noticed Buffy standing next to him, stroking Chris red hair back from his small tear-streaked face or her words of comfort. He was stuck, drowning, in his own thoughts.

Daniel had no way of making Chris feel better. It would be a useless attempt; just like everything else had been, he hadn't helped at all- in fact, he'd probably just made things worse- god! He was so useless!

Thoughts of his self-recrimination were brought to a halt as shouts of fear and warning erupted from the small crowd around Willow; he looked back in time to see everyone around her drop to the ground like puppets that had just had their strings cut.

Chris disentangled himself from Daniel and looked around, his eyes widened, "Mommy?!" the child struggled to get out of his arms.

A second later a torrent of dark energy flew from Willow's hands, past Daniel and Chris, and hit the ceiling next to where the monster was holding Kinsey.

Both he and Chris looked at Willow as she said, "Dinnertime."

In Daniel peripheral vision he saw his son's mouth drop open in horror as the monster dragged the struggling Kinsey up into the ceiling and out of their sight; his muffled screams echoed through his mind.

He felt Chris moved around, presumably to look at Willow, and a second later he screamed, "Mommy!? Nooo!"

Daniel whipped around in time to see Willow disappear in a cloud of shadows, he stood there frozen in shock, Chris's hysterical screaming echoing in his ears, surrounded by his motionless friends and colleagues lying strewn about the room like so many children's toys.

He felt the horror, hopelessness and grief of the last few days slam into him as he stared around at the carnage through water-clogged eyes; he blinked furiously to clear his vision and took no notice of the tears now rolling down his cheeks.

Daniel clung tightly to his son, the one success in the mess that he felt he'd made. He had, after all, been given the responsibility of saving his new-found family and look how that had turned out.

He had completely messed it up.