Willow had been gone for
a few days and the Summers household settled into an uneasy peace. Tara had retreated into herself and barely managed to
function. Buffy was still prone to hiding in her shrine and obsessively
re-reading Spike’s journals, finding new nuances to Spike that she had
never let herself see when he had been in front of her begging for
attention.
She barely ate and only
interacted with Dawn. Their
relationship was slowly rebuilding and there was less of the teen angst and
dramas and a more quiet, mature Dawn. Patrolling had become a distant
memory; she had neither the energy nor the strength to fight. With Giles
gone, there was no one there to hold her or the others together.
Their stabilising influence was currently living in Bath with no
intentions of returning.
For the first two nights
Dawn had insisted on sleeping with Buffy. The teen had been terrified that
Willow might try to do something to her or her sister. But after Anya’s
phone call and promise that all of them were safe from Willow’s
interference, Dawn had calmed down enough to sleep in her own room again.
Leaving Buffy to her silent conversations with Spike and reading her way
through the century of experiences that created the vampire she had loved
and lost.
~~~~~~
“Look Wills, as much
as I want to help, Tara doesn’t want to see you. I did ask. Why don’t
you try the campus.” Xander sent a mental apology to Tara, but Willow’s
constant begging for help was turning him grey. If he wore a pair of glasses
he would be polishing them and pinching the arch of his nose.
“Did you wait for her
this morning and tell her I was sorry?” Willow grabbed his arm and stopped
him from getting up from the research table and escaping to Anya.
Her eyes had a feverishness to them that made the hairs on the back
of his neck stand on end.
Xander looked down into
the thin face of his friend and wondered where it all went wrong. She had
been the sweetest girl, ever a cheery point in his otherwise miserable
childhood. Always there to pick him up and put him back together after his
parents had ripped him to shreds.
Now he was trying to
very clumsily put her back together, but he could see the hungry and angst
ridden look in her eyes. He was failing spectacularly. Silently, Xander
thanked Anya for making sure that they were all protected from Willow's
magicks. He had felt her trying
to get into his mind several times since they had taken her in and the
physical evidence of Willow's nosebleeds had underlined his suspicions.
Xander also knew from what Anya had whispered to him in the darkness of the
night that Willow had been continuously spell casting on the girls in
Revello Drive. It all sickened him and more importantly, frightened the
pants off him.
"Xander, did you
hear what I said?" Willow's voice had a hint of a whine to it,
something she had never had before.
Xander looked down into
the sweet face he'd known all his life, and was surprised. She looked
haggard, great big black rings under her eyes and lines on her forehead and
ridging the sides of her mouth, pulling it down into an angry curve. She
looked half starved and ready for a meltdown. He resisted the urge to grab
Anya and run for the hills.
Affecting the lopsided
smile that was his trademark, he sighed, "Sorry, Wills. I was miles
away."
"I asked if you
thought Tara might like it if I took over some flowers and asked her out for
coffee."
Before Xander could
answer, Anya's replied for him, "Willow, I really think you are in
denial. Tara is exceptionally distressed by your repeated attempts to
manipulate her mind to suit your own ends. If I were still a Vengeance
demon, I would be offering her a freebie."
"Hey!" Willow
glared at Anya. Her fingers twitched then fell still when she remembered
that anything she cast on Anya doubled back onto her with twice the power.
She had learned that the hard way when she'd maliciously zapped Anya's heel
off one of her shoes so that she would fall.
A few minutes later, Willow had fallen head over heels down the metal
ladder leading to the prohibited books in the shop. She rubbed her shoulder,
the faint bruising there all that was left of her injuries. She'd researched like crazy trying to find out what
protection spells had been laid on everyone, and especially why anything she
tried backfired on her, and she'd discovered nothing. Willow had exhausted
herself trying everything in her power to regain control of the situation
and it was beginning to bug her even more than Anya did.
"Anya, no wishing
for icky things to happen to my bestest bud." Xander waved a finger at
his fiancée and tried to ignore the massive amount of tension in the shop.
He was getting tired of being the mediator between them and was not looking
forward to the conversation he had planned with Willow.
Anya humphed at him and
then made talking gestures with her hands behind Willow's back. Xander's
shoulders slumped as he took in the determined slant of her chin.
If he ever wanted to see her naked then he had to bite the proverbial
bullet, he knew there was no getting away with this.
"Hey Will, wanna go
for a coffee and some donutty stickiness?" Xander gave her a sickly
smile and tried to ignore Anya doing her dance of nahnahnahImadeyoudoit by
the cash register.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffy waited for the
sound of the front door clicking shut and the house falling silent before
she left her room. She and Dawn where getting on fine most of the time, but
Tara was a sorrowful presence in the house. Spending her days on the campus
studying for her midterms and then hiding away in her room. The tension in
the house was a major factor for Buffy's hermit-like behaviour. Well, that
and Spike. She spent hours reading and dreaming about what could've been.
The constant revisiting old ground and re-writing history was slowly
beginning to erode her grasp on sanity and without anything to stabilise
her, Buffy was slowly losing herself in a depression of massive
proportions.
Her baby sister didn't
understand and wasn't equipped to help. Tara was too lost in her own grief
over Willow's behaviour and repeated attempts to contact her magically.
Xander and Anya had their hands full with Willow, but from the call last
night, Buffy suspected that Willow would soon be visiting her parents for a
while. Giles was at the end of a phone line; he cared, but there was a
distance in his voice that made Buffy hesitate. She knew that he would never
understand the grief and pain she carried as a result of letting Spike down.
Even as she had sobbed it out that first time he had called, Giles had been
almost paralysed with not caring. So she had stopped sniffling at her
erstwhile Watcher and turned the topic of conversation to something
banal.
She grabbed the pile of
post that Dawn had tossed on the hall table and shuffled into the kitchen to
find coffee.
"Bill…Bill…Bill...mental
note to self, need to find a job to pay these." Buffy threw the
utilities bills on the counter and then frowned. Her fingers toyed with the
edges of the buff manila envelope that she had come across, her eyes
narrowed at the sight of the words Department of Social Services on the top
right corner of it. Dropping it on the breakfast bar as if it were burning
hot, she turned to get some caffeine before opening it with
trepidation.
She cupped the warm mug
in her hands, trying to leech some warmth into her frozen skin. The letter
lay open next to her shaking fingers. Buffy looked down at the neatly typed
letter, her heart breaking even more. She’d broken her promise to her mom. Buffy shivered
continuously at the realisation that she was an utter failure and wished
that they had left her rotting in her grave. Where she deserved to be. If
the others had left her be, then Spike would still be undead and Dawn
would’ve been happier.
It was over…it was all
over.
They were taking Dawnie
away from her.