First off, thank's Mary. Secondly, a blissful dearth of snot wads?
Can't say I've heard that before, but considering that my Mum, Dad and brother all have nasty colds at the moment, I've seen plenty of them!
Title: At Any Cost
Author: Paul aka Darth Pacula
Distribution: Knock yourself out, just ask first. ( That means yes if you're not sure )
Feedback: Go nuts. The more the merrier. Unless you're all wanting to roast me at the stake that is. Then, less is more.
Disclaimers: The fact that I'm on my Mum's computer in Bundaberg doesn't seem to have changed the fact that I don't own any of the characters from BTVS. What a pity. Anyone else, is a product of my own insanity.
Summary: A powerful, ruthless and unstable figure begins to meddle in Willow and Tara's lives, with unforeseen consequences.
Rating: PG-13, maybe R at times for a touch of violence.
Timeline: Well now, it starts off just before the end of Seeing Red, but will contain elements of an altered Season 7.
Spoilers: Err ... pretty much the entire show. If you haven't seen any of it yet, and actually want to, you just aren't trying hard enough.
Thoughts are in
italics.
The story so far ... Willow and Tara have survived their enocunter with Nameless, and Willow's been tricked back into using her magic again. A touch battered and traumatized, our favorite witches have been carried away by a spell of Nameless' to who knows where ...
Part 19.Reality reasserted itself with a sudden, jarring shock as Nameless' spell dumped the two witches unceremoniously on their front lawn like two unwanted sacks of potatoes. The sudden cessation of movement left both women dazed and more than a little bit queasy, not unlike the sensation a person suffers when they step off an escalator, albeit magnified to an uncomfortable degree.
“I think I might be sick,” Tara mumbled as she rubbed at her stomach with her free hand. Her other hand was still clenched white-knuckled in Willow's.
Willow felt a swift flush forming on her face as her partner's words reminded the redhead of her own deception, and guilt gnawed at her with a voracious appetite. As Tara abruptly released her hand, Willow felt a sense of foreboding sweep over her like a storm front.
I'm lying to her. Again. Okay, so I'm less with the interfering with her memories this time, and goddess, how could I have ever been so stupid, so arrogant! Ugh! You're getting off the point here, Rosenberg. You're lying to Tara. It would serve you right if she left you again. I know I should tell her, but ...“Willow? Sweetie? Are you okay?”
Willow's head jerked up with guilty start, to find Tara peering at her in concern. Forcing a weak grin onto her lips, Willow gave a spasmodic jerk of a nod.
“Yep,” she blurted, driven by her guilt, and her own tendency to babble, to overcompensate. “Big time yep here, I'm fine. Finey McFine, living the high hog on old McFiney's farm, rolling in the fine mud ...”
Tara crooked an eyebrow in deeply loving amusement. “Breath, Will. I get the hint, you're fine.” But the blonde's amusement was short lived, and was swiftly replaced with an expression of heartfelt worry. “Are you sure, Willow? I don't really know what happened with Nameless, but you seem pretty shaken up.”
This display of Tara's obvious concern for Willow's wellbeing, despite the ordeal she herself had just suffered, just made the redhead even more guilty. In part to avoid blurting out the secret she was keeping despite her better instincts, but mostly because she hated the idea of Tara worrying, Willow felt driven to try and assuage her partner's anxiety.
“Me? What about you? You're the one who got shot! In the head!” Willow paused, going slightly pale as her memory reached up with tendrils forged from her own fears, and brought back the terrible moment when she had thought she'd lost Tara forever. “I thought I'd lost you, baby,” she continued in a heartrending whisper.
Shaking her head in denial, Tara enfolded Willow in a tight, intimate embrace as tears welled up in her own eyes. “You'll never lose me, Willow Rosenberg,” she whispered into her lover's ear. “No matter how lost one of us gets lost, the other will always find them, remember?”
“I remember,” Willow mumbled back. “But I was so scared that I'd lost you, Tara.”
“I know, sweetie, I know.” Tara drew Willow's head onto her shoulder and gently stoked her lover's hair. “Did you want to talk about it?” she asked, secretly hoping that Willow would not. Tara was still fighting to absorb everything that had happened in such a small space of time, and now didn't feel like the right time to talk about it, even with Willow. Thankfully, Willow shared the blonde's opinion.
“Later, baby,” the redhead replied, reluctantly raising her head from it's pillow upon Tara's shoulder. “We'd better find Buffy and the others. They don't know that we're safe yet, so they're probably going nuts by now.”
Willow turned and led the way towards the front door on still wobbly legs, patently refusing to release hold of Tara's hand for even a moment. But even as Tara followed, a dark thought crept into the recesses of her mind, unwanted but unstoppable.
Are we really safe now?**********
Rupert Giles stared down in consternation at the map of Sunnydale that had acted as the focal point of the locater spell that he had just cast. Absentmindedly, he slipped off his glasses and gave them a quick polish. That task completed, he returned his glasses to their perch atop the bridge of his nose, and returned his eyes to the map, in the hope that during the short break it would have become more accommodating.
Unfortunately, the map remained recalcitrant, and the Watcher frowned, and turned his focus upon the ritual that he had just performed.
I burnt the correct herbs. I invoked the correct deities. My pronunciation was spot on. So ... why hasn't this bloody spell worked?Xander's head popped over the former librarian's shoulder and joined Giles in staring at the map, his usual expression of genial bewilderment that he wore when confronted with magic replaced with an expression of anxious bewilderment. In truth, Giles thought it made the young man look slightly constipated, but proper manners would never let him say so to Xander's face.
“Did it work, G-man?” Xander asked, his voice dubious.
Then again, proper manners dictates that I don't bludgeon Xander either, and that's proving rather difficult at the moment.Buffy chose that precise moment to pop her head over Giles' shoulder. “Of course it worked, Xander! Giles knows what he's doing!” The Slayer's hundred watt smile slipped slightly as Giles failed to confirm her statement. “Right, Giles? I mean ... those two glowy dots are supposed to be Will and Tara, right?”
“In theory, yes,” Giles answered warily.
“So we found them! Yay us!” Xander declared thankfully, utterly missing the fact that Giles wasn't sharing in his enthusiasm. “Where are they?”
“Honestly, Xander, even a trained monkey can read a map,” Anya interrupted scathingly, the opportunity to put down her former fiancé too much for the ex-demon to resist. The shopkeeper added her own contribution to the growing cornucopia of heads peering over Giles' shoulders.
Anya peered intently at the map, and a dissatisfied frown appeared on her lips. “You did it wrong, Giles,” she bluntly pointed out.
“I most certainly did not!” Giles snapped back. “The .. the spell worked perfectly.”
“It can't have,” Anya argued matter of factly. “It wouldn't be showing there if it had worked. That's the last place Nameless would have taken them.”
Buffy's gaze was bouncing between Giles and Anya like a spectator at Wimbledon. “Where? What's going on? Did the spell work or not?”
“Yes,” answered Giles at the same time as Anya replied “No.”
Dawn joined Xander as Giles and Anya began to bicker back and forth, and glanced down at the twin sparkling lights that were supposed to signify the location of Willow and Tara. Her forehead creased in thought as Xander regarded the teenager hopefully.
“Is that our house?” she asked.
**********
“They're not here, Tara!” Willow called out down the stairs, anxiety flooding her voice. “None of them! Not Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Xander, not even Anya! At this point I might even be glad to see Spike!”
A voice floated up from downstairs, loud enough for Willow to distinguish as belonging to Tara, but otherwise incoherent, so she turned and hurried downstairs. Given everything that had happened already tonight, even a short absence from her partner was making the redhead antsy, and the fact that all of her friends had disappeared wasn't helping matters.
Rounding the corner at the bottom of the stairs, Willow caught sight of Tara standing in the kitchen with her back facing the redhead, and broke into a trot. Tara heard the sound of Willow's footfalls, and turned with a questioning expression. Even still, she was almost floored by the force with which Willow pounced on her.
Once she had recovered her composure, and was certain she wasn't going loose her balance and fall to the floor, Tara hugged Willow back with a fond smile. “I take it you missed me?”
“What gives you that idea?” Willow mumbled wryly, her face still buried in the crook of her partner's neck. “Did you find any sign of the others?”
“I guess you didn't hear me earlier then?”
“No, I did!” Willow vigorously protested, as if her honor had been impugned, drawing her head back from Tara. Then her face fell into a mock pout. “I just ... didn't so much actually understand what you said,” she admitted. “But I did hear you!”
Tara favored her girlfriend with a lop-sided grin, and leaned in to kiss away her pout. “Then to answer your question, no I didn't find any sign of anyone. There's no note, no anything.”
The redheaded witch's face crinkled in anxiety. “You ... you don't think that ... maybe ... no, there wouldn't have been time, would there? Unless there was some time distortion effect going on? Though we were both unconscious for a while, so ...ugh! I just don't know! Tara, what do you think?” Rousing herself from her introspective rambling, Willow turned to her partner hopefully, eager to gain the blonde's input.
“Um, sweetie? Before I can comment, I kind of need to know what you're talking about.”
Willow's mouth spread wide in an adorable 'O' of abashment. “Oh! Sorry!” she blurted apologetically. “I was ... I was wondering if maybe Nameless had taken them too?”
“But we only just left him, Will,” Tara noted with a small frown, her brow creasing slightly in a way that Willow wished she could take the time to smooth with a myriad of butterfly light kisses. “There can't have been time, can there?”
Willow blinked as her agile mind skipped off of the 'kissing Tara' track it had careened on to, and back onto her earlier train of thought. “That's where the whole time distortion theory comes in, baby! Plus, we don't really know how long we were unconscious for, do we? He could have grabbed everyone else while we were dead to the world!”
“But why would he do that, Willow?” queried the blonde witch. “He seemed kind of fixated on us personally.”
“He seemed like an emotional yoyo, Tara!” burst Willow angrily, still incensed by the manner in which Nameless had treated them. “Who the heck knows what he'd do?”
“Do you really think that Nameless could do something like distorting time? Willow, the amount of power it would take? I can't even begin to comprehend it. Is it even possible?”
“Well, we've already encountered one demon that had a kinda ... squiggly effect on time,” the redhead pointed out. “So it should be theoretically possible.”
“Um ... sweetie?” Tara offered softly. “Don't you think that maybe ... maybe they're just out looking for us? After Nameless took you too?”
Willow paused, a sheepish expression stealing over her adorably animated face. “Oh, well sure! If you wanna get all logic gal on me.”
“I wouldn't dream of usurping your position, Willow,” Tara quipped with an indulgent smirk in reply. “But maybe we should go look for them?”
Willow trailed behind Tara as the blonde made her way to the front door, and reluctantly raised the point that had occurred to her as Tara began to twist the doorknob. “But where do we look? They could be anywhere.”
Tara paused on the halfway point of the threshold, and turned back to face the woman who was her everything, shrugging apologetically. “I didn't think that far ahead,” she admitted. “I guess we have to figure out where they might have gone, and go from there?”
“It'd be easier if Buffy didn't keep slaying her cellphones,” Willow noted with a wry grin, as she took Tara's hand once more and they made their way onto the lawn. “So where do we try first?”
“Evenin', ladies.”
The unexpected voice took both witches by surprise, and given the understandably shaky state of their nerves, their reaction was not unexpected. Redhead and blonde spun around in alarm as a single entity, and toppled in the same fashion as their still wobbly legs entangled with each other. So it was that they came to be lying in a tangled pile staring up at the startled face of Timothy Garner.
“Crap! Sorry!” he blurted anxiously. “I didn't mean to startle you. Willow? Tara? Are you two okay?”
“Timothy?” Willow finally managed to say as she dug her own elbow out of her ribs.
By the stunned redhead's side, Tara struggled up to a sitting position, and managed to make a more coherent statement. “We're fine, Timothy,” she assured their concerned neighbor. “We're just a little jumpy today ... er ... I mean, tonight.”
“Oh, good ... that's good. I mean, I'd hate it if I made you fall and bash your heads on a rock or something. That'd be ... ya'know ... bad.”
Her flustered neighbor's ramblings brought a smile to Tara's lips; the very normalcy of the moment was a welcome tonic to the supernatural machinations of Nameless. “Yes, head bashage would definitely fall under the bad category, I think.”
“Timothy, what are you doing out this late?” Willow blurted curiously, then realized that her almost demand was somewhat rude, and tried to verbally backpedal. “Not that it's really any of my business, is it? I mean, it's not like I'm your mother, cause well, look! You're older than me! So you're an adult, you don't have to answer to me, and ...”
“I was out jogging,” Timothy finally interrupted, with a amused grin accompanying his look of amazement at the run on nature of the redhead's statement. “Hence the overabundance of stinky sweat .... and the fact I'm this far away,” ( He held up his fingers a fraction apart ) “from collapsing in a boneless heap.”
“You were jogging?” Tara asked, frowning in concern. “At this time of night? That ... that's not really safe in Sunnydale,” she continued awkwardly, unsure of how to clue Timothy into the dangers of living on a Hellmouth without sounding like a raving lunatic.
“Yeah, I know,” Timothy replied guiltily. “I'm running the risk of getting mugged or something, but that's why I jog. So if I do happen to meet someone scary, I can run away really, really fast. At least that's the theory.”
“Running away's good, if the scary thing hasn't ripped your leg off,” Willow noted darkly as she and Tara helped each other to their feet, thusly missing the confused expression that flitted across their neighbor's fine-boned features. By the time that either woman had returned their attention to Timothy, he'd pasted a smile back on his face.
A thought sprang into Willow's head, and she stepped closer. “Timothy, you wouldn't have happened to have seen Buffy or Dawn, or any of our other friends, would you?”
“You mean the little blonde and her sister? Sure. They and a bunch of others peeled out of here at a great rate of knots a while back. Looked like they were in one heck of a hurry, too.”
Willow's entire face lightened at this proof that Buffy and the others had not, in fact, been kidnapped. She was about to inquire hopefully if Timothy might perhaps know where Buffy and the others had been headed, when the phone rang in the house behind them. Sharing a surprised and hopeful glance between themselves, Willow and Tara ran for the front door, shouting a belated farewell over their shoulders as they went.
Timothy shook his head in bemusement as the two women hurried back inside. “Nice girls,” he noted to himself. “Weird, but nice.”
Inside, Tara was the first to reach the phone and snatched it up, placing to her ear and uttering a breathless “Hello?” as Willow all but bounced from one foot to the other in anxiety beside her.
“Tara?”
“Xander?”
“You're there? You're really there?”
“Umm ... yes?” Tara answered uncertainly, as the sound of bickering rose to a crescendo in the background over the phone. “Where are you?”
“She's there!” Xander yelled excitedly, and Tara held the phone away from her ear with a wince. “No, it's Tara,” he shouted again in reply to a mumbled inquiry, apparently still not realizing that he was yelling down the phone as well.
“Is Willow there too, Tara?” he finally asked in a more normal tone of voice.
“Yes, Xander, we're both here,” Tara replied. “We're fine. Where are you?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah! We're at the Magic Box.” There was some further mumbling in the background, including a shrill squeal of delight that Tara was sure belonged to Dawn, and a brief, scratching, scrabbling noise as if a war were being fought over ownership of the phone. Finally, Xander's voice returned, albeit slightly out of breath. “Stay right there, Tara. We're on our way.”
With that, the connection vanished, leaving Tara with the distinctive electronic bleat of the dial tone. She turned to Willow with a slightly shell-shocked smile.
“Well, I guess we found them.”
**********
I tumbled down the last few stairs to my lair, and hit the concrete floor, hard. Blood trickled from my gasping mouth to puddle upon the floor as the impact jarred my broken bones. Lurching to my knees, I laboriously dragged off my coat, growling in annoyance at the havoc Willow had wrought amongst the potions and artifacts I had kept there.
Not my best plan, I think. But desperate times call for desperate measures.Nudging aside my still-open shirt, I peered down in irritation at the cluster of fleshy tentacles that had started to protrude from a patch of blistered skin on my ribcage. My new appendages twitched as if they felt the displeased heat of my gaze.
“Let this be a lesson to you, boys and girls,” I muttered to thin air. “Don't mix potions willy-nilly like this. You never know what you're going to get.” A bitter smirk crossed my ravaged features as I seized the handful of unwanted tentacles and drew my knife. “Look at me; I'm turning into Forrest Gump.”
The razor sharp blade sliced through my flesh as I performed my own impromptu surgery. Still more of my own blood ran hot and wet over my fingers, and I bared my teeth in a silent rictus of pain as I cast away the still twitching tentacles. Magic coursed through my veins as it sought to reknit both the self-inflicted wound, and the bones that Willow had broken; I could heal myself of such mundane wounds easily enough. It was the ravages that the dark magic itself inflicted upon me that posed the problem.
I crawled weakly to the nearest work bench and clawed my way upright on rubbery legs. I could have avoided Willow's strike easily enough; in the realm of magical combat, she is at best a rank amateur. But that would have defeated the purpose. Willow needed a direct threat to her beloved Tara to jolt her out of her own stupidity.
She needed someone to fear, someone against which to rail in self righteous fury. She needed someone to hate. So, no matter what it cost me, I became that person. No matter how much I could not bear her pain, for her very eyes to fall upon my wretched form, it had to be done.
I had given her a chance; all that time between when I had deflected that vampire's bullet to when I had struck them down. I had circled the vampires and the witches, watching and waiting, hoping that Willow would come to her senses and use her magic. But she did not, and I was left with no choice but to intervene. To reveal myself.
But what's done is done. There can be no going back, not this time. So I will play the role I have taken. I will be the villain, the bad guy, the Big Bad. It is far better that they all hate me than discover the truth.
Discarding my musings, I scrabbled for one of the pre-prepared syringes containing the serum I used to combat the rot caused by my magic, and injected it. As I fell to the floor once more, my spine bowing with agony, my mind escaped into memory as I remembered what once was, and hopefully, what would be once again.
**********
Isiah turned to Sergeant Bixby with a deceptively mild expression on his mustachioed face. Bixby had been following his Captain for nearly two hundred years now, and knew Isiah well enough to know better.
“Any sign of the lads yet, Sergeant?” Isiah asked as if the thought had just occurred to him, but again, Bixby knew better; the location of the squad deployed to kill the Slayer's pet witches was a question that had been plaguing the Captain for a while now.
“No, sir!” barked the Sergeant, and Isiah abandoned all pretext of dispassionate interest.
“Where the devil are they, Sergeant?” he grumbled, scowling irritably. “According to our intelligence, only one of the witches is practicing, so they can't be that much of a threat. So long as they followed their orders.”
“Perhaps ... Raoul wasn't quite ready to command a squad, Captain?” Bixby offered politely. His true opinion of the Latino vampire didn't bear mentioning in polite company.
“Raoul's a moronic, arrogant, ambitious pox on my arse, Sergeant,” Isiah responded bluntly. “But I thought even he was capable of following a simple order. How hard can it be to shot two defenseless women, eh?”
Isiah stalked off to glare out the nearest window into the night, hands clenched together in the small of his back. After a moment's contemplation, Isiah turned back.
“We'll have to assume that the squad is lost, and that this location is potentially compromised. Put the contingency plan into effect.”
Bixby nodded with iron precision and turned on one heel to see his officer's orders carried out. Isiah's voice made him pause and look back.
“Oh, Sergeant? If Raoul does happen to turn up, remind me to kill the little idiot, would you?”
**********
“That's it?” Xander asked in disbelief. “That's all he did?”
Willow and Tara had just finished recounting the events of their kidnappings, following an emotional reunion, and Willow was not at all pleased by her oldest friend's reaction.
“That's all?” she repeated, quite a few octaves higher than normal, and still climbing. “That's all you've got to say? He tries to kill Tara, and that's your reaction!?”
“Well, strictly speaking, Nameless didn't try to kill Tara,” Anya pointed out helpfully. “He just made you think he was trying to.” As Anya finished speaking, she realized that her actions could be interpreted as acting in Xander's defense, and she scowled, and tacked on an addendum. “But Xander is still an idiot.”
Willow subsided grumpily, but Tara squeezed the redhead's hand comfortingly, and Willow's grouchy mood vanished like mist burnt away by the sun.
With a tired eye-roll in Anya's direction., Xander continued. “I'm sorry, Will. It's just ... so much less than what we'd feared. Though ...”
The redheaded witch looked at Xander in confusion as his voice trailed off uncomfortably, but Tara quickly ascertained the source of his discomfort. “Xander ...” she began warningly, but Xander ignored the blonde and continued.
“I'm more concerned with the fact that you're off the magic wagon. I mean ... not an actual wagon that's magic, more the AA kinda wagon.”
“What was I supposed to do, Xander?” Willow demanded. “He was ... I thought he was about to kill Tara! What was I supposed to do?”
“No, Willow!” Dawn countered with an angry glare at Xander. “Of course you did the right thing.”
“I wasn't trying to ...” Xander began, as he realized that he'd once again inadvertently put his foot in his mouth. “Of course you did the right thing, Will. That's a given. It's just ... we all saw what this did to you last time. I don't want to see that happen again.”
Willow's face softened as she realized the underlying concern for her wellbeing that had inspired Xander's statement. “It's not going to happen again, Xander. I promise.”
“So ... you're back on the wagon now?” he asked expectantly, and Buffy, Dawn and Anya joined him in staring at the redhead as they waited for their expected confirmation. A confirmation that didn't come, as Willow shared awkward glances with Tara and Giles.
“Alright, that's it!” Buffy snapped. “You three are keeping secrets, and we all know where that ends up. Now make with the spillage!”
“Spike's going to trick us into getting at each others throats again?” Xander quipped, trying to diffuse the tension in the air. For his efforts, all he gained was a variety of dirty looks.
Willow swallowed a nervous gulp and stole a glance at her lover for support. Nodding, Tara squeezed Willow's hand, trying to give whatever emotional assurance she could. Taking a deep breath, Willow mustered her courage and proceeded to bring the rest of the Scoobies up to date with what Giles had revealed to Tara and herself earlier.
Once she had finished, Dawn was the first to respond. “So ... you're not addicted to magic?” she queried in a flat, brittle tone of voice.
Willow shook her head, eyes downcast in a manner that was all too familiar to Tara.
“So, when you crashed that car, and broke my arm, you were what?” continued the teenager in a glacial tone of voice. “Just high on your own sense of power?”
Willow nodded weakly, deeply ashamed by the memories suddenly assailing her. Tara's heart ached for her partner, and she longed to take Dawn to task for her attitude, but as much as she wanted to, she couldn't. Dawn had the right to feel the way that she did. Unpleasant as it was to admit it, Willow had hurt her, hurt all of them, and while they might have long since forgiven her, it was still a blow to learn that Willow herself had played a greater role in her own downfall than they had previously believed.
Buffy, however, didn't share Tara's sense of confliction. “Dawn!” she snapped furiously.
“What? Is that supposed to make it better?” Dawn demanded. “It wasn't the magic's fault, it was Willow's?”
“But that's a good thing, Dawnie,” Tara tried to argue.
“It is?” questioned Willow hesitantly, trying to conceal an unwanted feeling of betrayal. But despite her best efforts, Tara easily picked up on Willow's distress, and hurriedly attempted to assuage it.
“Yes, sweetie,” she quickly replied. “Because it can be rectified. You just have to relearn how to use magic, responsibly this time.”
“Hang on a second,” Xander interjected, a look of confusion crossing his open face. “If Willow wasn't addicted to the magic, then why'd she go through withdrawal symptoms when she stopped?”
Xander looked back and forth between the two witches, not accusing nor demanding an explanation, simply curious in an utterly non-judgmental manner.
Even after everything that's happened this year, he still believes in me, Willow thought in amazement. The continued, unconditional trust that her oldest friend still had in her brought a warm feeling to the redhead's heart.
Unfortunately, Willow didn't have an answer for him, and judging by Tara's helpless shrug, neither did she. Giles, however, came to rescue.
“Well, what Willow suffered was not an actual physical withdrawal per say,” Giles stated, clearing his throat with an awkward cough as he settled into his familiar lecture mode.
“Giles, you weren't here, you didn't see what Willow went through,” Buffy stated, her eyes narrowed. “You didn't see the shakes, the twitching, the sweating. You didn't see any of it.” The Slayer's voice was heavy with undisguised censorship, and it brought a slight frown to Giles' lips.
“No,” he admitted, somewhat shamefacedly, “I wasn't. But I can surmise what brought about such results.”
The Watcher was warming to his subject now, and began pacing back and forth across the lounge room where the Scoobies had gathered.
“From what I've been told, Willow was using a considerable amount of magical energy before ... before the event that proved a catalyst for her decision to forgo any further use of magic, until this current juncture in time, that is.”
Xander turned to Willow and spoke in a stage whisper that everyone was supposed to hear. “He did just you were way big with the mojo, right?”
Willow nodded, as Xander's tomfoolery brought a wan smile to her face, while Giles gave a long suffering sigh, as he knew from previous experience that there was no point in doing otherwise.
“In any case,” Giles continued, “when Willow simply stopped, there would have likely been a considerable amount of magical ... energy, if you will, built up within her system. The presence of this arcane residue, combined with the normal physiological pressures of resisting Willow's learned pattern of behavior, by which I mean her over reliance upon magic to solve all of her problems, most likely caused what you have called her 'withdrawal symptoms'.”
“So, it's like someone got a ketchup stain on Willow's favorite blouse?” Buffy asked, summing up Giles' statement in her own particular fashion. “It just needed time for the stain to wash out?”
“I suppose ...” Giles began, but Dawn interrupted with a vociferously voiced complaint.
“I apologized about that!” grumbled the teenager, glaring daggers at her sister, who pointedly projected an aura of blissful ignorance. This was an insult that no self-respecting sibling could let slide.“Also, there's that whole learn pattern of behavior thing Giles was going on about.”
“I wasn't going on about anything!” Giles protested fruitlessly, as the two sisters slipped back into their familiar combative places.
“It's something like if a certain someone suddenly tried to stop solving all of her problems with violence,” Dawn pointed out with a sweet smile that fooled absolutely no-one. Buffy's answering smile was just as sweet, and equally fake.
Giles stepped between Buffy and Dawn before their little example themed spat turned into a fully blown sibling war of epic proportions. “Could we perhaps, for once, proport ourselves as professionals?” he asked hopefully. “Just once, could we act like something other than the Keystone Cops of the supernatural world?”
“We're the Keystone Cops?” Buffy pouted.
“That doesn't seem fair, Giles,” Dawn added, rising to her feet and crossing her arms in displeasure. Buffy joined her sister, providing a united front.
“Wonderful,” Giles muttered dryly. “I've managed to provide you with a common enemy.”
“Oh, I don't know,” Xander interjected, attempting to come to the Watcher's aid. “I've been called lots of things worse than the Keystone Cops.”
“Oh, that's definitely true,” added Anya brightly, and Xander visibly perked up at her support. “I've certainly called him far worse things since he left me at the alter like a big, fat coward.” Xander's face fell again, like a dollop of sloppy mud slipping down a wall.
“Can we ... can we just stop this?” Tara begged, and all eyes suddenly turned to the blonde witch, who was sagging, tired, in her chair. Willow wasn't in much better condition. Tara blushed as she found herself the center of attention, a situation she was normally all too happy to avoid, but she forged on regardless.
“Willow and I are fine, or we will be o.. once we've had a chance to deal with everything. Nameless is the threat we're facing. We should be concentrating on him. But right now, we should all be getting some rest.”
“But ...” Buffy tried to protest, but Tara raised one eyebrow pointedly, and Buffy subsided, grumbling something about a 'mother hen' fondly beneath her breath.
“Yes, you're quite right, Tara,” Giles agreed gratefully. “It's been a dreadfully long day, and I think we could all do with a good rest.” He began shooing the others off the couch, before fixing the piece of furniture with a baleful eye. “Time to match my spine against this infernal excuse for a bed again, I think.”
“Okay then, unless anyone want's to see Giles strip down to his tighty whiteys, I say we call this Scooby meeting a bust, and pick it up again tomorrow,” Xander suggested, bounding to his feet with a sense of energy that belied the dark rings beneath his bleary eyes.
With a vast chorus of 'ewws' and other variations upon a similar theme, the remaining scoobies traipsed out of the lounge room, Xander offering the offended Englishman a hapless shrug as apology.
“I do not wear ...” Giles began before his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Oh, what's the use?”
**********
When Willow awoke the next day, she felt only marginally less tired than when she had laid down to sleep. There's
not even a good reason for me to be tired, Willow grumbled to herself as she tightened her grip on Tara's arms wrapped around her like a security blanket, and luxuriated in the feeling of the swell of Tara's breasts pushed into her back.
Last night, despite the desire for reconnection they had both felt, both women had felt too tired to do more than kiss and cuddle for a while before they drifted off to sleep, wrapped in each others arms. Now, Willow felt far too comfortable to even consider moving.
There had been no re-occurence of the disturbing dreams she had been having; even when she couldn't remember them, they had left her filled with a sense of vague, ominous dread, and that was thankfully missing this morning. If Willow didn't feel quite so dog-tired, she would have been feeling the best she had felt since this whole Nameless issue had started.
I've got a nice comfy bed, I've got ... mmm ... Tara-snuggles. She cracked open one tired eye and warily surveyed their bedroom before continuing her internal musings.
To all appearances, there isn't an imminent apocalypse occurring, or some grinning manic waiting to turn us into his own personal playthings.Willow froze as an unwanted thought crashed, fully formed, into her sleep muddled mind.
Did I just jinx us? God, how could I have so stupid? That's Xander-level stupidity! Oh god! How could I say that? He's my oldest, dearest friend! But ... I didn't actually say it, so is it so bad? Does that count for jinx's as well? Hmm.Willow shifted comfortably as her mind began to warm to it's new subject. Tara mumbled in her sleep as her lover moved, and Willow was momentarily distracted as love flowed through her, incandescent and unmeasurable, a river of light burning a path of sweet agony through her veins. That love made even the most insignificant action fascinating; the even, blissfully warm feather touch of Tara's sleeping breath against Willow's neck was enough to bring a delighted grin to the redhead's lips.
After spending what seemed like a single, eternal moment glorying in every aspect of the life that lay beside her, Willow finally returned her scattered thoughts to their previous subject.
Right, where was I? Oh, yeah. Does a jinx have to be verbally spoken to take effect? Well, on one hand, if non-verbal comments could qualify as a jinx, I'd have to imagine that they would occur a lot more often.Willow's thoughts suddenly ground to a halt as her stomach clenched like a fist, it's contents churning, bile rising in her throat. No, she desperately thought, fighting a losing battle against her rebelling body. No, dammit! No! Don't do this to me! Please!
But no matter how much she tried to stop it, in the end, she couldn't. Rolling over her like a remorseless, implacable tidal wave, the nausea overwhelmed Willow, and she felt the first spasms wrack her slender frame.
Scrambling violently out of her bed, Willow sprinted for the bathroom, unable to answer Tara's startled, nearly incomprehensible query as the blonde was dragged from slumber. Even as Willow hurled herself to her knees in front of the toilet, the contents of her stomach were rising, and then the world contracted.
For Willow, there was nothing but the cramping nausea in her gut, the desperate need to void herself violently into the toilet bowl. As bout after bout of stomach cramping regurgitation ravaged her slender frame, Willow suddenly realized that Tara was there, holding her hair back from her face, rubbing soothing patterns upon the bare skin of the redhead's back in the gap between her pajama top and bottom. Her everything whispered soothingly in Willow's ear, words that couldn't Willow couldn't understand, but then again, she didn't need to. The love inherent in Tara's voice was all that Willow needed to hear.
When the attack was over, when Willow felt as if she had turned herself inside out and left herself hollow and empty, she wiped her mouth clean with the back of her hand, spitting the vile taste from her mouth as best she could. Tara silently offered her a glass of water; Willow had no idea from where or when she'd procured it. But no matter what it's source might be, the redhead gladly accepted it, desperate to wash the sour taste from her mouth.
“Willow, sweetie? Are you okay?”
Looking up at her lover's face, Willow saw both the deep and powerful love, and the abiding worry, that was etched so vividly across Tara's beautiful face, and knew what she had to do.
“There's something I need to tell you, Tara.”
To be continued ...
That’s right: In order to make this event LESS popular, the female activists take off their tops and jog in front of onlookers. - Scott Adams, regarding the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.
. The only battle Nameless seems to be losing is the one with his own body, which takes time.
G'day all, and greetings from sunny Queensland where the sun is shining, the cicada's are buzzing, the air is warm and sticky, and I'm stuffed to the brim with food, glorious food. Ah, the joys of an Aussie Christmas. Anyhoo, I hope everyone else has had a good festive season.
I think this latest update should be safe though ... oh, hang on. Maybe not. 
Happy birthday of Evil One 
Sorry sometimes I'm a bit dense. My best friend always told me that's part of my charm but I doubt it.
Hi Paul - wonderful as always!
)
. Just with the 
and pop the bady arrives.
Keep your devil imagination up and update the story soon
