Chapter 48
Choices
Donny's head was reeling, as if he had just drunk a series of shots in only minutes. One minute Willow's corpse was on the floor, and the next she was standing on her feet, brushing herself off and looking at the pool of blood on the floor with distaste.
Neither of them could have known that there was so much blood yet to spill on those wooden floors. Scalding water and bleach could never erase the memory of them, and the door would always remain shut.
The red bloom on her sweater was sickening, as was the smell in the room. Donny's hand trembled on the gun that was trained on his father's forehead, the gun he fought for and won after Willow was shot. He tried to keep a wary eye on his tricksome father while reassuring himself that Tara's girlfriend was indeed alive. Within the moments of her rising, she had conjured cable-thick ropes of Smoke wrapped around his father, tying him back against the headboard of his own bed, the sheets still rucked up by his thin body. Mr. Maclay glared at them balefully, a magical gag in his mouth, even as Willow took Donny to the side of the room and whispered to him. When she was finished, Donny finally understood everything. No wonder it had felt so right, the desire to kill his father. With his blood, The First would unleash the greatest evil this world had ever known.
Not if Donny could kill him first and spill his blood where it didn't matter. With a dead disciple, the game would be won. Tara would live.
"We should kill him now," Donny said, hefting the rifle in his hands, lifting it once again to that sweet spot in his father's throat.
A gentle hand on the barrel.
"Donny," Willow said, pushing the rifle away. "As long as we hold your father captive, we know that Caleb will come here, looking for him. We need to keep your father alive until I can figure out how to get Caleb out."
"Caleb. You mean my sister."
"Yes," she gulped.
"And we can't hurt him, because he's in my sister's body."
"Yes."
"And the only reason he is in my sister's body, is because she took him out of you."
Willow looked near tears and anger crested inside him. So much of this was Willow's fault. This red-haired trollop came into his sister's life, and the vibrant caring Tara was replaced by a diseased possessed Tara who could die a violent death on a lonely hilltop on the other side of the world. If the Seal were opened, that would be her fate.
The alternative wasn't much better. She was still dying of a brain tumour, a tumour Caleb put there. A tumour she wouldn't have, if she hadn't saved Willow.
"I'll save her, Donny," Willow cried, as if she could know what was going through his mind. He wouldn't put it past her, being a witch and all. Just like filthy Aranaea, sifting through his mind, never giving him a moment's peace!
"Just how, Willow? You don't even know! This Oz guy couldn't tell you, and the gods aren't speaking to us anymore. You can't just stake her life on you figuring it out at the last second!"
It took a great deal of energy to calm down instead of lashing out with fists as well as words. It was no matter – those words seemed to strike the slim girl as sure as fists ever did. Was he becoming a new man at all? Was his dawn still rising?
Willow's jaw was tight, her eyes weary. She stank of blood and dirt, the combination of smells reminding Donny too much of the dead ones in the shed. "You should have a shower and clean up," Donny said. "Tara's room is just down the hall. She left clothes there. I'll stay with him."
Donny returned his attention to his father, not watching Willow trudge away in sorrow and defeat. It was disconcerting to see his father's mouth slightly open and nothing there. He was grateful, though, not to have to listen to his father's lies anymore. He was glad to have something to do, a choice to make, as simple as this one was. For a while, he could choose to stay, and wait.
So he did.
For a while.
He heard Willow sobbing down the hall, but tuned out that miserable noise. Then came the familiar hiss of the shower and ten minutes later Willow emerged, armed with a dangerous plan. After she left again, it was easy to stay awake and alert now that he had a mission to fulfill. His father safely tied and gagged, Donny found he didn't even have to watch him that closely. The sun continued to rise, cresting over the horizon and filling the little room with light. Willow warned him she would be as fast as she could, but that time was different where she was going.
(Every second is a minute in the dimension of the Eye.)
Donny didn't really want to know. He was not interested in Willow's world – only in what it meant for his sister.
He couldn't really say how much time had passed when he noticed that there was someone else standing in the room with him. A strange lassitude had fallen over him, and his eyelids were heavy. The room was warm, a comfortable heat like a mother's womb. When he turned from watching a thin strand of saliva run from the mouth of his normally fastidious father, he saw his mother standing in the corner of the room.
Her hair was cornsilk, and she smelled of dusty summertime grass. Why, when she moved, did he also catch only the faintest whiff of that tin-shed mummified girl smell? Why, when she spoke, was he not surprised?
"Hello, Donny."
The voice of his angel mother, in front of whom Donny was weak. Donny was a coward. Basically, Donny sucked.
Always tricksy, always false, The First played on Donny's memories like a master composer, and the longer Donny stood there, gazing at the form of one so well-beloved, the hurts and malice of the past were eased, painted over with a darksome brush, covering truth with welcome vileness.
For her voice was as he always remembered, and it fit so well with the voice of his father. They had been together when he was young, and she had put daisies in her hair, and laughed in the cool evenings. Stories at bedtime for he and his sister, always with happy endings, the benevolent face of his father watching from the doorway, a pipe in his hand, the smoke wreathing his head like a god of old. The two of them, his parents, so strong and fair, that Donny felt small, insignificant near them, incapable of their lofty speech, watching their faces from afar, feeling always the power of their love for him and for each other.
"What have you done to your father?" She bent near, as if to kiss the bound man on his brow, her lips ghostly and inconsequential. Tight yearning filled Donny's chest with a powerful ache of loss – so many years gone, so much lost in the grave.
"I – I," Donny stuttered, cursing himself for his cluttered tongue. Years since he stuttered, why now when he wanted so badly to impress her?
Willow should have told him more about The First Evil, and its penchant for using mothers. Robin Wood would have recognized it, as would Buffy. But could even their knowledge, combined with Willow's spells, have kept Donny safe?
He was, after all, young, and alone, and motherless.
Against the force at work in that tiny room he had no power. He would bend like a reed in the wind.
And what she was asking was such a simple, little thing. Free his father. Dissolve the spells. Save his sister. And save the world. Donny the Great, bowed to on bended knee by the multitudes of people he had saved, and among them the woman who would become his wife, and together they would work their magic on the world, to heal its sorrows and pains. For he, too, could work magic. Was Donny not also of Aranaea's dirty blood? The world to come would be a great one, with every luxury he was denied. The taste of the world would be sweet on his lips, the noise of his praises a symphony to his ears, the touch of fine silks and linens under his hands.
No world Willow could offer could be so sweet.
"I stayed with your father my whole life," Anna finally said. "Doesn't that count for anything? Believe me, and help us do this."
So he worked the spell, with herb, with potion, and unknown words. His mother was a fantastic teacher, though he wished he could touch her. He tried to once, and his hand passed through her incorporeal body as if it were merely light and illusion, leaving a strange scent of fell fumes.
The last word spoken, the last herb tossed upon the bed, and the bonds of air, which held his father tied, were loosed. Donny the wizard. Donny the triumphant.
Donny the fool.
The illusion was finally broken. For his mother cackled, and his father laughed in derision, and he remembered what he had promised Willow. To keep his father safe, until Caleb came for him.
No powder, no magic. So when his father lunged for the weapon, and Donny wrenched it from his grip, pointed the shocking end one last time at his father's head, and squeezed the trigger just as he'd always been taught, he could have said it was in self-defence.
At that close range, bits of gore and bone gouged Donny's cheeks. He remembered his sister, trapped within Caleb's body forever now, and wept.
Half a world away Carlo lay dead, and The First appeared to Caleb in the form of Buffy, and whispered new instruction. By Donny's hand, the first plan was over. Time for Plan B.
The restaurant. The body. The gift of Nyx. And p'achi.
(Open the mouth)
The world still would scream, as the skies flowered with demons, and the oceans budded with leviathans deep, and the minions of the world schooled on destruction and nursed with fell bloods and flesh would arise to take back what had once been theirs alone.
...
Willow had fallen to pieces in Tara's closet. Sobbing on the floor, she pulled down hanger after hanger of clothes, pressing them into her face, breathing deeply of Tara's scent. Soon the sobs turned into great tearing gasps of pain and loss, a pain far more deep than her bullet wound, for as the wound healed instantly she knew this would not. It had all become too much for her, too fast. Narrowly saving Oz, seeing John in the crowd, getting shot in the chest and barely surviving – this was not one of Willow Rosenberg's better days. She knew so much, but still it wasn't enough. Oz couldn't get any more information out of Maia – the gods had disappeared and no one knew why. As optimistic as any Scooby had a right to be, especially a Scooby who narrowly averted death by rifle, Willow knew that if they followed the plan, she would have no need to kill her beloved with the scythe. Imprisoning her father was the best life insurance policy Tara could have found.
Yet Willow forced herself to consider the alternative – a necessary practice after seven years of Scoobyage. There was a possibility that the Seal could open, and then Tara would have to stand upon it, and Willow would have to kill her with the scythe, after which Willow would surely go insane.
The world could ask no more of her than this. The price had already been too high to pay.
Why couldn't you give me a place to come home to?
A shocking, dangerous world, but one she shared with friends. For a time. Recent moments with Tara seemed to make up some of her earlier losses; her sorrows tempered by joys she thought never to experience. Beyond the Seal there was a shadow and a great black wall. The cancer made every moment finite; there would be no more of them.
Durians and morningstars and a kitten-abraded couch.
Snuffling into the clothes, Willow danced with despair. The irresistible scent of Tara seemed all around her, permeating her skin, her bones. After Tara was dead, Willow could come here, and sit in the closet, and go mad. It would be a good choice after all the other ones had gone so wrong.
No more backups. No more monster-fighting team. If Willow was going to pull off the impossible, she'd do it on her own. The human encyclopedia she used to have in Giles was utterly gone – where could Willow go to find the answer to the biggest question of all?
How do I save Tara?
She gathered some clothes and headed to the shower, her mind blazing with equal parts loss and an insatiable drive for knowledge. When she emerged ten minutes later, her mind was made up. It was a dangerous course, but it would have to do. Donny seemed reluctant at first, but he agreed to watch his father. There could be no contact between them once she left. She would just have to be quick.
Willow didn't want to use Angel again to open the portal to Beljoxa's Eye; the vampire was a little peeved at her latest orders. But Lorne was just as green-skinned and amiable as she remembered. The kindly host of Caritas took in her earth-shaken appearance and her request with a single glance, likely reading her tumbled and desperate face as well, and immediately conjured open the demonic dimension of Beljoxa's Eye for her. Stepping into the windy dimension, conscious now of every second that passed, Willow swiftly made her way to the tentacled conglomeration that was the oracle.
The Eye was less than pleased.
"This isn't a frakkin' Baskin Robbins, toots. Why are you here again?"
Willow refused to be intimidated by a giant eye, especially when the scythe was loose in the scabbard on her back. "I want some answers."
"And I seriously want a day at the spa. It doesn't look like either of us is getting what we want now, though, are we? Now beat it."
"Unless you help me, the whole world is going to end." Willow didn't think she'd get much of a response, and the Eye's next words held her true.
"You make it sound like the end of the world. It's happened before. It will happen again, whether you get my help or not."
Where was Buffy when Willow really needed her? There were times for sweet-talking and cajoling, but there was also a time for well-directed violence. These underworld types always seemed to take violence seriously. At least Willow wasn't in her battered pink fluffy sweater any more. Yet even in Tara's dark clothes, her jaw tight and that cool gleam in her eye, she wouldn't get much out of the Eye.
But no gods gifted her with the ability to stop time. It made her rather desperate. "I'm running out of time, and the gods aren't answering me!" she cried.
"They have problems of their own, toots. In case you haven't noticed, the assault on heaven has already begun. Do you think The First is only interested in your dimension? He wants to rule all dimensions. If you plan on doing anything about it, you better get a move on. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
"Aren't you worried about them coming for you?"
He wants all dimensions, to cast every world into shadow.
"Hey, this isn't exactly prime real estate here. I can just see the listing: dark, windy dimension twenty feet long by twenty feet wide, inhabited by a giant eye. They don't care about me."
Somehow, Willow knew he was bluffing. She suddenly felt winded, as if she'd been punched in the gut.
"How do I save Tara?"
Willow had never heard an eye sigh in exasperation before. "First, you need to trust her. She knows more than you think she does. And you must also put your trust in those you've unknowingly helped in the past. You know, the whole Circle of Life thing? One good turn deserves another? Now toodle. Oo."
Out of all things he could have said, this was most preposterous. Trust someone she's unknowingly helped? There were uncounted dozens she knew of after seven years of hell-breaking Scoobyage. But those unknown?
"How am I supposed to know who that is?"
"Could that possibly be another question? I believe I'm done with the questions, and I believe you have work to do." Suddenly all the eyes snapped shut, but before Willow could gather her breath for one last try, the eyes flew open, all of them filled with inexpressible horror. "Tara's father is dead and Tara is dying! If you are going to save any of us, go!"
