E-mail: chocolatewillow@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Joss owns the characters.
Rating: R for violence and stuff.
Spoilage: Angelus is back. With a vengeance. Season 2-6 have been skewed to fit my twisted image of a fic.
Couples: B/Aus, eventually, W/Aus, W/Spk, maybe.
Notes: I know I've got stories to finish, but this bitched at me until I finally sat down and typed the damn thing. Lyrics by Nickelback and in **.
Archivng: My site, Nell, Soulmates, Aradia, if she wants it.
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*Never again
I've seen it before
but not like this
been there before
but I've never seen it this bad*
~Prologue~
Willow tripped upstairs, hurrying faster than she normally would. She had a bad feeling all night while she'd been studying a new demon threat at Giles' place. Finally, about an hour before dawn, she driven back the apartment, unable to contain her emotions any longer. Giles, knowing but never liking the situation between Buffy and Angelus, had loaded her for bear. Or in this case, a very angry master vampire.
She thrust her key into the lock and shoved the door open, following the scent of fresh blood to the kitchen, where she let out a strangled cry and dropped to her knees beside her immobile best friend, a puddle of blood leaking out from under her.
Buffy was turned on her side, one eye completely swollen, the cheekbone most likely broken. Her left arm was wraught at a horrid angle, the bone peeking between torn muscle tissue and blood vessels.
"Jesus," Willow muttered angrily, pulling her cellphone from her purse and calling for an ambulance. It was too close to dawn, he wouldn't be back anytime soon.
She gently brushed a lock of blood soaked hair out of Buffy's eye, and with great difficulty the Slayer opened the eye that wasn't the size of a golfball. "Will..." a tear slipped out as she struggled to speak.
"Shh," the apprentice Wicca whispered. "Don't, Buffy. We'll deal with this tomorrow, when your better." Because the redhead knew the Slayer would be more coherent and able to answer her questions once her healing ability kicked in.
The ambulance pulled up and loaded Buffy into the back, Willow declining to go with them, because she needed to make one more phone call. She'd go to the hospital when her plan had been put in action.
And not one second before. The important thing was saving Buffy's life. And taking the thing that was killing her out of the picture.
"Giles? It's time."
~Part: 1a~
Giles nervously polished his glasses. Willow had just called and was now on her way back over to his house, where she'd spent most of the day. Researching, mostly, sharing kisses and many pots of tea.
And talking over her plan to save Buffy from Angelus. He knew, just as well as Willow did, that Angelus wanted her. Not Buffy. He never had, and he'd as much told them so with all his taunts and threats. But the slayer wouldn't open her eyes to the fact that Angelus could or would want anyone but her.
And Willow was going to give it to him. He hated it, but to save Buffy, it really was the only way, unless by some miracle they killed Angelus, which still left his childer, Penn, Spike, and Drusilla. All three of which were currently in Sunnydale, ruling the hellmouth with 'Daddy'.
All of which added up to a hellish existance for Buffy. Ever since she'd met Angel, and committed the one act that screwed her forever, no pun intended, the watcher thought; smiling wryly. She and Angelus had been dating, if you could call it that. Domestic assault would be the legal term.
Managing to hide it into well into the group's senior year, Buffy had shrugged the bruises and welts and cuts off as slaying injuries, and granted, her healing took care of them quickly, but Giles had always had his suspicions, but his budding relationship with Willow often clouded his judgement, and hers too.
Willow had indeed been the first one to realize it, after stumbling upon it in a most....traumatizing way. She'd come home early from his house one night, before dawn, driving home because she'd had an early class. Buffy had been staying at her home for the better part of the school year, after her mother died.
Circumstances notwithstanding, to make a long story short, Angelus had passed himself off quite well as Angel, and it wasn't until he was exiting the house did he whisper some uncouth things in Willow's ear, and she saw the tears pouring down Buffy's face as she lay bruised and bleeding in the bed.
The uninvite spell was immediately performed, and Buffy was not happy. With either of them. She refused to speak to anyone for a month, until she finally broke down and confessed all to me in a long, tear filled conversation.
Currently Buffy was staying with Willow at the college, and although she didn't like it, until a better solution was found, Angelus crept into the girl's room every night and fucked the Slayer, beat her, did anything he wanted, basically.
Because she loved him. Or so she said.
Giles was startled rather harshly out of his thoughts when Willow pounded on the door, then remembered she had a key. "Giles. We need to put this in action. NOW. You should have seen her. I've never ever seen her this bad before. He's got something in mind, and it looks like he tried to kill her tonight, Giles. I won't let that happen. I WON'T." she finished her sentence in a tone that would freeze steel and she opened the trunk that served as the Watcher's coffee table, after removing various accoutrements from the top of it.
"Willow, I'm not sure if I feel comfortable with you doing this.." he started, then stopped at her look.
"And you don't have a choice. If I don't do this, Buffy will die, and then you, and me, and Xander, and Cordelia, and probably will extend to Anya and what's his name, Riley? Farmboy. I'm doing this, Giles. You think I feel comfortable walking into the lair of the master vampire? Not in a million years. Ever. But it's the one thing he wouldn't expect. And all we have is the element of surprise. It ends now, Rupert."
Her use of his given name pleased him and he smiled, not only at her new outfit, which she had somehow changed into while lecturing him.
It was the exact thing her doppelganger had worn while temporarily in Sunnydale through a portal flux. "Did you steal that from Evil Willow, Willow?" he asked with an appreciative glance towards her cleavage and a chuckle.
"Shut up, Giles. She wanted me to have it, really." Grateful for the change in mood, Willow plopped down next to him, groaning as the tight leather pants she was wearing creased in all the right places.
"You want some tea before you leave, Willow?" Giles asked, holding out his own mug, liberally spiked with whiskey.
The redhead, knowing what was in it, grinned as she took it. "Bottom's up," she said, knocking it back with a shudder.
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