Chain

By Irfikos

Part IV: Blood, Love and Rhetoric

4.6: Staring Into the Sun

Take this invitation
Bishop's Queen to Pawn
All of us were taken
All that was, is gone
Of this information
Shames us, one and all
Where's my compensation?
Watching others fall
Welcome to the fall

– The Fall
Ministry, 1995

----

All of a sudden, it’s too bright. Which is way weird because the lights are out and it should actually be really dark, right? At first, she can’t see anything but light. Sorta familiar in an unnerving way. But also wrong in a whole not belonging in front of her eyes like this way. Wrong like staring into the sun until you go blind. It’s so bright she has to close her eyes to see. And she can see like that. All pink and diffused through her eyelids, she sees Dark Shape Willow kneeling over Dark Shape Spike. Like shadow puppet theater. Only in surround sound. All around her, she hears Willow chanting something in a language even more unfamiliar to her than the French she had failed to learn in high school. The words sound all loopy and distorted, like a Tricky song. Played backwards. With blown speakers.

Buffy squints her eyes open to see Willow calling the light to her, funnelling it into her outstretched hand where it grows dense and compact, swirling and writhing on her palm.

Ball of sunlight, Buffy has time to think, just as Willow stops chanting and, with a grin, shoves her hand, light and all into Spike’s chest. He throws his head back, bellowing in agony and goes all translucent, like an x-ray of himself. The light fills him up. Spills from his eye sockets. Still so bright Buffy has to look away. Has to squeeze her eyes shut for a second.

When she looks again, Willow is pulling her hand from Spike’s chest and there’s no hole there where there should be. Just the same pale flesh stretched tight over bone. And the room is dark. The only illumination comes from the scant moonlight that fights its way inside through a shattered skylight high up in the roof. The weird, ethereal light is gone and Spike is just Spike again. Still, Buffy holds her breath, expecting him to crumble to dust at any second.

He doesn’t. He looks at Willow, wide-eyed with shock, as she rises to her feet and brushes herself off.

“Oh,” he whispers, like he just remembered the answer to a riddle he had abandoned years ago. He tries to pull himself to his feet but staggers and collapses to his knees. Willow steps over him, apparently no longer interested in him at all.

“Oh,” he says again, looking around at the room they’re in; the people in it; down at his hands. He looks as if he’s been trapped in the middle of a play and has no idea what his lines are. He’s just there, in the middle of the stage as the scene plays out around him.

Willow, on the other hand, is relishing the spotlight she’s created for herself. Her captive audience. She turns to Warren once again and picks up her conversation with him where she left off.

“How’s it going, Warren? Hangin’ in there?” Willow crinkles her nose in amusement at her little joke. Buffy feels a surge of indignation. That’s her thing – punning before the kill. Can’t Willow even think up her own thing? Now she’s stealing the Slayer’s act! Channeling the competitive prom queen within, Buffy keeps pushing. For all the good it seems to be doing her.

Warren sees that he’s the focus of Willow’s attention again. He squirms uselessly, eyes rolling in terror. With another twirl of the hand, Willow makes the seal over his mouth disappear. He gasps but seems to be done with screaming. Buffy is able to push forward another couple of inches. Warren watches her snail’s progress, seeming to fully realize at last that his likelihood of being rescued anytime soon is not very promising.

“Please, God…” he begs, desperate. “I did wrong, I see that now. I need… jail! I need… But you – you don't want this. You're not a bad person. Not like me –”

He’s interrupted as Xander and Anya burst into the room, Anya complaining loudly to Xander as they enter. “–so many twists and turns it’s really an inefficient floorplan. Are all buildings on the hellmouth built like th–”

Her chatter comes to an abrupt halt when the two of them catch sight of what’s taking place directly in front of them. Buffy doing a really convincing “walking against the wind act,” Spike crawling on the floor, muttering to himself. And Willow. Evil. About to kill a guy.

Willow doesn’t seem too convinced by her intended victim’s argument anyway. Warren jerks his head toward the converging Scoobies. “When you get caught – you'll lose them too. Your friends. You don't want that.” He’s losing steam, grasping at anything that will buy him his life back. “I know you're in pain but –”

Willow rolls her creepy, button eyes, completely losing patience. “Bored now,” she drawls.

Xander and Anya both jump back with a squeak as Willow with a casual gesture flays the skin from Warren Mears’ body. Warren screams. The sound of it is ten times worse than the sight of him hanging there, looking more like meat than like a person. It is the sound of someone who has been skinned alive and is fully aware of it. Now Buffy knows what that kind of scream sounds like. She really never wanted to know that. Warren’s eyes are twitching in his skull, even latching onto Buffy for an instant before moving on. He’s alive. Conscious. Willow won’t let him not be.

“Oh my god.” Xander turns away, shielding his eyes with his arm as if they could be harmed by the mere sight of the carnage his best friend has just caused. Anya looks on, her face grim.

Buffy tears her eyes away from the Wes Craven-ness to look into Willow’s face. Nothing. She sees nothing. There’s nothing of Willow in there… Is there? “What did you do?” she asks, not wanting to believe this. “Willow, what did you do?”

Willow merely glances at the distraction of her friends, then turns back to smile at her handiwork. She looks pretty satisfied with herself. Another gesture and Warren bursts into flame and vanishes entirely.

Brushing her hands together to sum up a job well done, Willow turns back to the Scoobies. “Two down,” she mutters as smoke begins to curl up around her body and a red fire flashes in her eyes Lightning flashes inside the room as the witch’s body dissipates into smoke and is gone.

Suddenly finding no resistance to her struggles, Buffy is propelled forward. Throwing out her hands, she catches herself with Slayer-fast reflexes and flips back up to her feet. Anya steps forward, halfheartedly, to help, but stops to turn a disapproving eye on Xander as he bends over and gets sick all over the floor. She almost places a comforting hand on his back, but stops before she makes contact, stepping quickly away from him instead.

Catching her balance, Buffy goes to them and it is she who ends up doing the comforting back pat thing.

“You okay, Xand?” she asks, gently guiding him away from the mess. Anya accompanies them, hovering and scowling but not touching.

“Oh my god,” he says again. His record is skipping. Buffy knows how he feels.

“Xander?” she asks.

“I’m fine. We… we have to… Willow…” he sort of answers.

“Two down,” Buffy murmurs as Xander collects himself. “She said ‘two down.’ She’s not done.”

“She was talking about 'two to go', right?” Anya asks. “Jonathan. And, whatsisface, the other guy…”

“Andrew,” Buffy nods. “They're just sitting at county jail without a clue Willow's coming.”

“We have to stop her…” Xander squares his shoulders and takes a deep breath. From the grimace that immediately follows, it looks to Buffy like the deep breath might have been a mistake.

“…and get the hell out of here,” he finishes.

He turns to leave, Anya following. Buffy starts after them. Willow is pretty far gone, but she can hopefully still be saved. They have to get to Jonathan and Andrew before Willow does, though or it’ll be too late. For the remaining geeks and for Willow. Sending Angel to hell had nearly killed her. In a gut-wrenching, heartachey kinda way. Having to… do something… to Willow is not something she’s exactly looking forward to. It was bad enough when she found out Spike was killing again –

“Wait–” Buffy calls out, lingering and looking around the room to see what had become of Spike. He’s gone. She returns to the spot where she last saw him and kneels down. No dust. But no Spike. He’s pulled another David Copperfield. There’s nothing but a faint, streaked trail of blood that leads to a drainage grate in the floor a few feet away. She recognizes it.

The sewer.

“Spike!” she calls. She holds her breath, listening. No sound other than the anxious breathing of her friends behind her.

“Buffy,” Xander says, getting her attention with a hand on her shoulder, ”Willow…”

“Yes,” Anya agrees, sighing impatiently. “And I’m Anya. Now that we’ve established who everyone is, can we please get back to trying to stop the homicidal uber-witch?”

“Right.” Buffy stands up. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s go.”

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