The Watcher's TaleBy Medea
Chapter Two
5. HopeI knew that Willow, like the others, had crept into every part of my life. How could it have been otherwise, after all the trials we'd withstood together? And yet, it was still jarring for me to notice the unexpected corners where her absence made itself felt.
The magic shop bustled with customers as it always had, but there was a stillness to the air, a quiet emptiness that I'd never felt before. People came and went, money was exchanged for merchandise, yet ironically the store seemed to have lost its magic.
I took to dusting and straightening the shelves after hours, rather than during business hours. It was either that, or run the risk of greeting my customers with red-rimmed eyes and the sort of dour countenance that isn't very conducive to making a sale. Willow was everywhere and nowhere. I could pick up a tome and recall when she'd used it last...and wonder if a trace of her lingered on the pages, some warm imprint her hands might have left behind.
Research sessions were more subdued, the camaraderie less lively. Oh, the work got done. We survived; we even laughed, occasionally. But the ache inside never quite healed. Not for a long, long time.
She was gone from our world, and now walked in another.
Even something as simple as sitting in front of a computer could summon up feelings, although I could hardly avoid using one.
Yet if the computer had the power to summon up old ghosts, it also provided us with our first glimmer of hope.
Tara began to convey news of Willow. That Willow was writing to her at all was unusual for a vampire. My training as a Watcher had led me to assume that the only contact vampires bothered to have with companions from their previous lives was to slaughter them, or sometimes turn them. It made me wonder if, perhaps, there was indeed something about the unorthodox circumstances of Willow's existence that might give us reason to hope. I started researching the intricacies of vampire social hierarchies in earnest.
Which made it all the worse when we received news that Willow had been party to a vampire ritual combat. I'd come across references to a variety of these organized challenges of strength, most of which involved unrestrained violence and the total annihilation of opponents. That Angel had condoned Willow's participation in one, had even joined in himself, did not bode well.
I had half a mind to let Buffy make good on her threats to drive to L.A. and throttle Angel and Spike both. Believe me, the phrase "go kick their bloody asses" was poised on the tip of my tongue.
The other half of my mind would have gladly administered a sound thrashing myself.
In the end, neither of us did. However, not long afterward, Buffy grew restless. I knew what was bothering her.
A Watcher knows his Slayer, you see. And Buffy had long since become more than a Slayer to me. Not a daughter, so much as a kindred spirit. Two survivors bound by a commitment to what all too often seemed like an endless crusade. As such, we read each other as no one else could.
I knew what doubts had crept into her mind and realized that, soon, she would want to see with her own eyes what I had already seen.
I also knew that she would be furious with me when she returned.
I'd kept Willow's killing a secret at Angel's request and out of a hope that he could indeed wean her of the need to take human life once she was strong enough. It went against every principle I had. After the Cruciamentem, I'd sworn never to deceive Buffy again. And I was a Watcher, for Heaven's sake. It weighed on my conscience, on my very soul, that for the sake of a fledgling vampire who wore the face of a dead friend, I was turning a blind eye to the murder of innocents.
How far I'd fallen!
Or so I thought. But, then, at the time, I also thought I knew about vampires.
When Buffy returned from her first encounter with Willow since The Weekend, my re-education began. That is, once Buffy had finished giving me a royal tongue-lashing. But she also brought extraordinary news: Willow had offered to forego killing. She was still weak, still a minion, but for the sake of a Slayer's approval, she was willing to make the effort. It defied every bit of wisdom and expertise I'd accumulated.
However, it was entirely in keeping with Willow's friendship for Buffy.
There it was again, that glimmer of hope. Perhaps there was more of our old Willow in there after all.
I won't belabor the point. It's really Willow's story, and though I've filled more journals than I care to count, I still don't know the whole of it. But it was a turning point for me. Everything I thought I knew would be called into question. Ready or not, I was on my way to becoming...
Well, what I am now.
A legend among Watchers.
Dear God, that sounds unbelievably arrogant, but it's all I've heard from anyone for the past few years. All because I am one of the few Watchers in history who has had nearly unrestricted access to vampire society.
It had been so easy before, when I could dismiss vampires as no more than demons: diabolically clever, some of them; undisciplined street thugs, the rest. That had been the limit of my experience, with the possible exception of Angel, whom I'd neatly compartmentalized as an aberration because of his soul. Not surprising, really, given that the presence of a Slayer tends to cut down on the development of stable vampire communities in an area.
Quite a good thing, actually. Don't misunderstand, while I may have acquired a new fascination with vampire ways and customs through my association with Willow, I've not forgotten that they are predators first and foremost, nor have I forgotten my own place on the food chain.
But as I began archiving Tara's correspondence with Willow, then, over the years, my own, an intriguingly complex picture emerged.
I saw a shadow world filled with as much turmoil and contradiction as our own. There were vampires who clung tenaciously to ancient customs, like the Master who had nearly robbed me of my Slayer before she'd even begun. Then there were those who just as readily violated any and all codes of conduct. The whole clan system, from what I could gather from Los Angeles, was incredibly volatile.
And then there was Willow herself. The anomaly.
Her efforts to survive without killing were...well, rather amusing, in one sense. Also a bloody nuisance, considering the added vigilance it demanded of Buffy, especially in the months following her "cinematic debut", as Xander so waggishly put it. It was exasperating! Sunnydale's entire adolescent population was swept up in the ensuing vampire mania and Buffy found herself prying sixteen year-old girls off of their would-be killers, rather than vice versa. Appalling business, all of it. And Dawn, of all people, paraded around in one of those ridiculous, slogan tee shirts that made obscene reference to fangs and sexual prowess.
I read her the Riot Act. Which paled in comparison to Buffy’s reaction.
Not long after that, though, I had my first face-to-face encounter with Willow. I suppose it would make a better story if I could say it was dramatic, say, for example, if it involved a rescue or an overly stylized meeting in a misty, Gothic cemetery. It wasn't. It was as mundane as opening a door and seeing her standing on the other side.
Just like that, Willow was back in my life, and in some ways it was as if she'd never left. Once more, our research table was pleasantly crowded. I wasn't the only one affected; for the first time in quite a while, Xander's humor was fueled by a receptive, familiar listener. Poor Anya never really managed to distinguish that fine line between humor and seriousness.
Of course, there was the awkward fact that Spike was practically joined with Willow at the hip and took great pleasure in taunting Buffy over it. He was yet another mystery. Aside from a failed attack in her dorm room, I'd never really known Spike to have any particular interest in Willow as a human. So to see the way he doted on her – he, a master vampire, treating a minion with such regard – well, it further confounded my understanding of vampires.
He gave weight to her opinion, as if he genuinely wanted her approval. Not typical behavior for a master vampire one hundred and thirty years her senior. Not at all. Yet for Willow's sake, he curbed his impulses. Well, perhaps a little less successfully when it came to baiting Buffy and Xander.
Willow managed to help us knit the Hellmouth back together – she and her coven. With that task, it was almost as if the group had been knit back together as well. Something healed. Not perfectly, mind you. Willow was still a vampire; she was never quite our old Willow again. But, then, deep wounds always leave scars.
We started seeing more of Willow – and Spike, to Buffy's dismay. Sometimes it was strictly business, lending a hand in defeating a particular demon, averting the odd apocalypse here and there. Certainly, their assistance was invaluable, although it was a little jarring for Buffy to see Willow fight, and fight she did. According to Buffy, Willow once eviscerated an Ufkaansh't with her bare hands. Rather nasty work, considering that their innards are filled with parasitic worms.
Buffy confessed that it reminded her of fighting alongside Faith, in the early days. Willow didn't quite have a Slayer's strength yet, but she had the same zeal for battle as that misguided girl. And then there was the...er...post-combat mood. I'll never forget the conversation I had with Buffy about vampire sexuality after she caught a glimpse of Willow and Spike feeding from each other after a particularly brutal battle. First of all, telling my Slayer that her brief experience with Angel had in no way introduced her to the realities of vampire sexual appetites had never figured on my list of things to do. Hardly!
And then there was the fact that all I could tell her was of questionable reliability, at best.
Few Watchers have ever had any accurate basis for compiling accounts of the intimate lives of vampires, for obvious reasons. The scant details that have been recorded are thus treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. Most information on the subject has been consigned to volumes that are often regarded as little better than sordid fictions, more revealing of the author's own twisted fantasies than actual vampire practices.
Of course, every Watcher has these volumes in his or her collection.
They also tend to be the most worn with use in the Council's training center, much like copies of Lady Chatterly's Lover in public libraries. It's the first thing novices go for. A guilty indulgence in private; an object of ridicule in public. One or two references are given some slight credence. For example, the passages recorded in the early nineteenth century by Pedro Velasquez seem to have some solid grounding in fact, although his writings have been heavily censored over the years. His Slayer allegedly became romantically entangled with a vampire. Diaz, I think it was. At any rate, such accounts are rarities.
After all, since its inception the Watchers Council has been in the business of destroying vampires. Of what practical use could it be to know about their carnal habits? Or the possibility that they might be capable of love? Even less useful. That would only make them seem more sympathetic.
More human.
Dear God, what the Council’s obstinate, narrow-mindedness cost me, cost us all!
But I digress.
Through Willow, we each had our moment of truth about assumptions that had long ruled our lives. Xander's I could only guess at, but it seemed so profound, so powerful, that I was both desperate to ask him about it, yet reluctant to pry into something so personal.
It was the night before his wedding. Xander spent several hours with Willow, I think because he was hoping to reach out to his oldest friend before embarking on a life transition. Perhaps he needed to discover that his friend was still there. I wasn't privy to what transpired between them, but when I saw him the following evening, about an hour before the ceremony, he seemed subdued and more thoughtful than I'd ever seen him before. When I alerted him to slight traces of blood on his collar, his reaction surprised me.
Xander didn't seem alarmed, didn't try to wash it off. He merely closed his eyes and asked if I thought she could forgive him.
Naturally, I had no idea what he was talking about, and it showed. At my blank confusion, he confessed to having had an epiphany of sorts. He wouldn't say much, only that it involved Willow. Ever since she'd agreed to try to feed without killing, Xander had debated the possibility of offering a vein, much as Tara and Willow's coven sisters did. Apparently, he'd finally gone through with it. Hence, the blood on his collar, which covered a bite that hadn't fully healed yet.
I'd thought this was the source of his guilt: the bite, the intimacy of it. Xander admitted that it had indeed been intimate, more than he'd ever dreamed possible, but that wasn't the problem. Rather, it made him realize something about himself and how he'd viewed demons ever since he'd learned of their existence.
He was more ready than ever to marry Anya. What he regretted were all the times he'd unthinkingly disparaged demons – demonkind, writ large – in her presence, as if their nature alone warranted their condemnation. Xander was beside himself with worry that Anya might never forgive him for that.
It made me fiendishly curious about the bite Willow had given him. But my upbringing prevented me from asking, and Xander volunteered little.
In the end, his fears were assuaged. Anya was quite the enthusiastic bride, although far from blushing. Come to think of it, I can't recall anything that ever succeeded in making her blush. She was genuinely delighted when Xander revealed the bite. She seemed to take it as a sign of good luck. Later, I learned from Spike that Willow's bite had involved a kind of marking and that the gesture could be interpreted as a blessing on the union. Granted, it was so rare for vampires to offer their benediction to a mortal couple as to be almost unheard of. Spike certainly didn't bother to hide his disdain, although from then on he almost bordered on civil in his interactions with Xander, as if in deference to Willow's judgment.
It was one of the more curious episodes I recorded in my journals.
Buffy's moment of truth was delivered not by Willow, but at the hands of the Council's leadership.
Not that her relationship with the Council had ever been particularly rosy, mind you. But at least they'd left her alone, most of the time, especially after Glory. Even the Council had to admit that there was little they could do to intimidate a Slayer who'd faced down a hell god. For all his faults, Quentin Travers was a shrewd pragmatist who knew when it was in his best interest to concede.
However, Buffy's continued association with Willow eventually served as the justification for Travers' removal from his seat on the Council.
The coup, for that is what it was, ushered in one of the darkest periods of my life. No matter that it was preceded by some of the most precious experiences I've known. They were merely the calm before the storm.
Willow and Buffy slowly re-established their friendship, although it hardly involved the flushed discussion of boys or carefree dancing at the Bronze that dominated their youth. Willow was eager to hear how Buffy was faring at college, and Buffy was happy to share her growing interest in psychology. Thankfully, her experiences with that insufferable Professor Walsh hadn't extinguished her zeal for the subject, and Buffy was well on her way to completing the major. Willow seemed almost envious, and Buffy later told me that it felt strange to be the one thriving academically while her friend looked on from the outside, unable to participate because of her nocturnal existence. Buffy had expected their situations to be exactly the reverse.
It was also odd, at first, to reassign Willow to the category of Buffy’s occasional sparring partner. In my mind’s eye, I had grown used to associating Willow with books and Internet research. Perhaps it was my nostalgia for simpler, earlier days. Simpler? Well, relatively speaking, when my understanding of a Watcher’s responsibilities and a Slayer’s duty were more clear-cut. Somehow, this sense of normalcy was embodied in the image of a young, optimistic girl whose open, inquisitive eyes could identify an obscure passage in an ancient prophecy and at the same time manage to find good even in a vampire with a murderous past.
Buffy and Willow were amazing to behold when they sparred. Their moves were so evenly matched, so balanced that they almost seemed choreographed. I learned that it was a side-effect of Willow’s peculiar sensitivity to Slayers. Certainly, I knew that Buffy could sense the presence of vampires, and that the reverse was also true. But the finer points of how this worked were nowhere addressed in any of the literature available to me. The idea that there could be individual variation from vampire to vampire intrigued me, and I fear that I pestered Angel with some rather indelicate questions. Not that I realized they would be so unseemly, mind you. After all, Willow’s sensitivity to the Slayer took an innocent enough form, and Spike had no qualms about describing the ache in his jaw that served as his early warning. At Angel’s awkward reluctance to discuss his own situation, I should have left well enough alone.
Such is the wisdom of hindsight.
Instead, I persisted, and unfortunately raised the subject when Spike was within earshot. To Angel’s grave discomfort, Spike cheerfully (and quite crudely) revealed that Angel’s reaction to a Slayer involved the...ah, stimulation of certain parts...
Well, let’s just say that it’s hard to say which of us, Angel or I, wanted to stake him more, and leave it at that.
Angel visited less often than Willow did, for the same reason he’d originally left. It was simply too painful for him, for Buffy, and the normal course of human life wasn’t helping at all. It wasn’t too long after Xander and Anya were married that their son Jesse was born. For Buffy, though she was genuinely happy for her friends, it was nonetheless a painful reminder of the sacrifices her calling demanded of her. Not to mention the fact that her heart wanted no man other than one who could never give her children.
I began to understand how truly isolated a Slayer’s existence was. It was there in Buffy’s eyes when she watched Xander and Willow play with Jesse.
Willow doted on Jesse shamelessly when she visited Sunnydale. When he was a toddler, she and Xander would lay side-by-side on the floor and take turns setting him astride their chests. How he squealed with delight at the fact that Willow could remain perfectly still while his father’s chest rose and fell with the normal rhythm of breathing.
Honestly, the things children find amusing...
Certainly, I was encouraged; it was yet another sign that, miraculously, some trace of the old Willow had survived and was even emerging as the dominant force within her. At the same time, I felt the quiet sorrow of my Slayer. Willow was a vampire, yet she abandoned herself to the vicarious happiness she enjoyed through Xander and Jesse precisely because she had accepted that she was a creature apart and would never have a human family of her own. Buffy, though a Slayer was still mortal. She was in between, human yet not an ordinary human, and some part of her refused to let go of the fantasy of a normal life.
No, the one thing Buffy clung to most stubbornly of all was hope. Always hope.
Even when a band of cowards on the Council did their utmost to crush her.
6. Interlude
The instant Willow crossed into the portal, it hit her.Brutal, unforgiving force pressed down on her from all directions. It felt like her entire body was being flattened thinner than a leaf. So powerful was the weight that squeezed her that Willow couldn't even panic. Her mind was overwhelmed with the sensory alarms from cells and tissues crushed beyond all bearable limits.
She couldn't even fill her lungs to scream.
And yet, every fiber in her body was screaming, groaning against the punishing weight that would not yield.
As suddenly as the terrible pressure had come, it stopped. Willow's stomach lurched and her entire frame shook as her feet collided with solid ground. Weakly, she collapsed to the floor.
Willow remained prostrate and trembling for several moments. Eventually, she realized that the darkness of the vortex had lightened to a reddish-gray. When she wondered why she still couldn't see anything, it dawned on her that her entire body was tensed and her eyes pressed firmly shut.
Cautiously, she opened them and sat up.
She was on a spotless linoleum floor. A neat, institutional-looking mattress was level with her gaze. Willow raised her eyes and saw that she was in a hospital room. Instantly, her gaze snapped toward the occupant of the bed.
Giles lay there, pale and immobile, tethered to a complex life-support system by a network of tubes and wires.
Willow rose up and neared his bedside. Her heart, dead though it was, clenched painfully at the sight of him. How could one heart attack leave him so transformed? He looked so...frail. So small.
Tentatively, Willow brushed her hand against Giles's arm, then entwined her fingers with his.
"Giles?" came her plaintive whisper.
"Not with your voice can you reach him."
Startled, Willow turned toward the unseen speaker. It hadn't occurred to her that she wasn't alone.
A familiar figure, cloaked in midnight blue, was seated in the corner. Gnarled, purple hands rested lightly on either armrest of a plain, utilitarian hospital chair.
Willow gaped in recognition at a demon she'd not seen since the culmination of her quest for a means to secure Angel's soul.
"Hypnoi?"