The Borders of Night Start to Give, Chapter 6/26

[punch_kicker15]

Title: The Borders of Night Start to Give
Author: punch_kicker15
Rating: R
Characters/Relationships: Willow/Giles
Summary: A prophecy leads Giles to practice dark magic once again. This sets him down a dark path, and Willow may be the only one who can help. AU in which Willow’s magic training started earlier than in canon.
Word count: 47,533
Notes: Thanks to scratchingpost1 for generously offering a plot bunny that ate my brain, gilescandy and dragonyphoenix for looking over a very rough first draft and offering helpful suggestions and encouragement. Thanks also to the mods (red_b_rackham and traycer_ and other participants at het_bigbang for all of the help and hand-holding throughout. And special thanks to angelus2hot for some amazing art she created for this story.

Chapter Six

Giles

Giles stared longingly at the bottle of scotch. He'd finished his report about Glory's defeat earlier in the evening. It was full of carefully crafted sentences describing precisely how and under what circumstances Buffy had died. No mention of how it had ripped everyone's hearts out--just the dry, objective facts for future reference by other Slayers and Watchers. They would neither want nor deserve anything else. Now he wanted nothing more than oblivion in a bottle.

There was a knock at the door. Willow stood outside. He felt a ripple of her magic wash over him--perhaps the result of powerful spells, or her control slipping due to stress and exhaustion. "Oh, hello, Willow."

"Hi, Giles." She sat down heavily on the couch.

"Did you find any more creatures from Glory’s dimension?" he asked. He joined her on the couch.

"Maybe five or six. They were all dead already. Also, I gave the Buffybot a tune-up; she's good to go. And the cloaking spell for Buffy's grave--Tara and I cast that earlier tonight."

"That's good to hear. Tara had no problem with the magic?"

"Tara's--well---um, her magic was fine, maybe even better than before. She’s probably the only person I know who would come out stronger after being brainsucked."

He recognized that false cheery note in her voice. There was something she wasn't telling him.

She asked, "How are you doing?"

"I've been busy with reports. The Council hasn't located the new Slayer yet. They think she may be somewhere remote and the energy from Glory's dimension is interfering with the locator spells. They don't have any reports of any other unusual activity in Sunnydale, either."

She nudged him with her arm, "Hey--I asked how you were, not the new Slayer or the demons."

How was he? Seething with rage at the world that demanded so much of Buffy's life, and then greedily demanded her death as well. He struggled to think of an answer that wasn't a lie, but wasn't the entire messy truth, either.

Willow picked up on his hesitation. "That bad, huh? It's ok if you don't wanna talk about it. Just, if there's something I can do--"

“I will. Thank you.”

She fidgeted a bit, seeming to work herself up to say something. "Giles, do I--seem different to you? Like, well, magic-wise?"

"I can tell you've been using a lot of advanced magic lately, if that's what you mean."

"In, like a scary kind of way? Because Tara is afraid of me."

Oh, for Christ's sake. He really didn't want to spend the evening assuaging Willow's insecurities. “What exactly did she say?” Perhaps this was just Willow’s tendency to over-think things, and once he helped her realize there was no real basis for her fears, the crisis would be over.

She looked down at her hands. “We had a fight, you know, right before Glory got her. And Tara said that she was frightened of how powerful my magic was. She tried to pretend that she didn’t mean it, but I think that was because I got upset, not because she actually didn’t mean it. And that was before all of the magic I had to do to after Glory got her. I do feel kinda different . . . and tonight she said that my magic was so scary that she needed to break up with me.”

Now he felt like a churl for assuming that it was all in her head. “Oh, Willow. I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s part of the work we do: there are sometimes difficult things that simply must be done. And sometimes we lose people because of it. You were brilliant when we were fighting Glory. Not just with your spells. The way you led the group after Buffy went catatonic, and gave Buffy exactly what she needed to come back and fight--that was wonderful.”

Willow’s face crumpled. “Yeah, I was so great that I got Buffy killed.”

Oh, wonderful. Instead of making her feel better, he’d managed to made things worse.

“Willow, if anyone killed Buffy, it was me. I pushed her so hard about Dawn. Maybe too hard."

Willow took his hand in hers. “No, you were right. I mean everyone in the world and Dawn might have died if you hadn’t. Buffy was upset about the whole needing-to-kill-Dawn situation, but that wasn't your fault. And she loved you. That's why she told Dawn to tell you that it was ok. Because she cared about you and knew how you'd feel."

Something about the sincerity and vehemence in her voice just unmanned him, and to his utter horror, he felt tears well up. The next thing he knew, he was sobbing.

She moved closer to him and held him. He buried his face into her shoulder, sobbing so hard he couldn't breathe.

Finally he pulled away. "I'm sorry."

There were tears in her eyes as well. "It's ok."

He fished around in his pocket for a handkerchief, trying to compose himself. He hadn’t wept like this since--Jenny. “Angel. We forgot to tell Angel.”

"Crud. It isn't really news we can give him over the phone, right? But maybe getting out of town for a little while might be a good thing."

Giles said, "Are you sure you don't want to just take some time off? Go spend some time with your parents?"

She rolled her eyes at that last suggestion. "I'm sure. But let me do a healing spell for your wound before I go."

"That's not necessary," he said.

"I know you could tough it out. But if I'm going to be away even for a few hours, I'd feel better if I knew you were one hundred percent instead of even slightly distracted by pain."

He wanted to refuse. After everything she'd been through in the past few days, he didn't want to feel better at her expense. But she was right. They couldn't afford for any of them to be at less than full strength now.

"All right," he said.

"So, um, it helps if I can see and touch the wound, so if you could, um, open your shirt."

"Right," he said. It was foolish to feel self-conscious about this. She'd seen worse injuries hundreds of times. They all had.

"Ok, just putting my hand here, sorry it's so cold."

He felt tendrils of her magic gently brushing against his skin, small pinpricks burrowing underneath, exploring the extent of the damage from the javelin.

She did seem different from the last time they'd done magic together. He could feel her directing massive amounts of energy to his wound with precision, and without any perceptible effort. She was much more powerful now than she had been even a few months ago.

Her magic entwined through his, and traces of her thoughts and emotions surfaced. He sensed her concentration as she focused on repairing the torn muscle fibers. Her magic flowed from his side to the rest of his body, and his pain disappeared. He caught a hint of her pride and satisfaction before she moved on to repairing blood vessels. Finally, as she created new cells to replace the damaged ones, a wave of her magic surged through. It enveloped him, a burst of warm and sensuous energy, and his body responded to it instantly.

She gasped and abruptly finished the spell, and pulled her hand away quickly. His face flushed hot, and he could barely look at her.

“I’m so--so sorry--” he began, but Willow was talking, too.

“--never happened when I practiced this spell with Catherine, and I don’t know why it got all--well, you know--”

He sneaked a look at her. Her face was bright red. At least he wasn't the only one who was embarrassed. "Let's call it an unexpected side effect."

"Right, um, a side effect. So, I should probably go..”

***

Willow

The failure of the spell was eating away at her. Willow decided to drop in with Catherine on her way out to LA.

She glanced at the cauldron on the stove, the shelves of candlesticks, the scrying mirror hanging on the wall, while she tried to figure out a non-embarrassing way to ask the question.

Catherine rinsed tumbleweed leaves in the kitchen sink. “What’s the matter?”

Willow took a handful of leaves from Catherine and placed them on the drying racks. “I--um, had a healing spell go all, um, sexy. With Giles.”

Catherine looked her over. "That could be some neurons firing off in a random way. Let's test the spell again."

She dried her hands, rolled up her sleeve and sliced open her left arm. Willow healed it. It felt the same way as it always had, before all the weirdness with Giles happened.

Willow frowned at Catherine's arm. She didn't want the spell to go all sexy with Catherine, but it would have been easier if she could blame the spell for everything.

“So you have no idea what happened?” she asked.

Catherine rolled down her sleeve. “No clue. Just remember to keep doing your grounding exercises. You look like you’re struggling a bit with your control.”

Willow sighed. She’d hoped for a real explanation and a specific solution. But she had a long boring bus ride with nothing better to do. Might as well do grounding exercises so the bus ride wasn’t a total waste of time.

***

The Hyperion Hotel was empty. There was nothing for Willow to do but wait. She sat down on a couch and curled her knees up to her chest.

Now that there were no distractions, her mind started turning the Tara situation around in her head. How could she have saved Tara's mind and destroyed their relationship at exactly the same time? It seemed tremendously unfair. Did Tara really think that Willow should have let Tara suffer, in body and in mind, just to avoid using dark magic?

Her hands curled into fists. Think of something else, anything else.

It had been a long time since she’d had a spell misfire as badly as Giles’s healing spell had. Well, not misfire--she’d healed his shoulder, so the spell had worked--but gone so far off from what she’d intended. She blushed at the memory of end of the spell. It should never have happened. Attraction to men shouldn’t be part of who she was anymore.

Stupid brain, always focusing on her failures. She should keep meditating and connecting with the earth, so she wouldn’t make any more silly and embarrassing mistakes. She closed her eyes and focused on the molecules in a few specks of dust on the floor.

Voices roused her from her trance. Angel and his friends. They sounded happy. Even Angel.

Angel said, “There’s no place like--Willow?”

Cordelia seemed to realize that something awful must have happened. “What’s--”

She looked at Angel, trying to come up with the right words to tell him that he’d lost his one true love. Angel figured it out before she could say anything: “It’s Buffy.”

Willow nodded. She stood up, her legs aching from sitting in the same position for hours. Suddenly the room faded away and she was on the edge of the Hellmouth. It opened and dark energy rushed over her, a fierce wind pushing her backwards. The energy swarmed all over her skin, into her mouth and nose and ears, down into her lungs. Terror gripped her, and blossomed into pain in her chest. Her legs wobbled and she pitched forward.

It took a few moments for the Hellmouth to fade out, and the hotel and everyone in it to return. When it did, she was curled up on the couch. Someone had draped a blanket over her.

Cordy and Angel hovered over her. Wesley was keeping his distance, but his eyes were fixed on her. “Sorry,” she said. “I just had like--a really intense, um, vision, there for a minute. I’m ok now.”

“A vision?’ Cordy asked. “What did you see?”

***

"--for the last time, it was just the Hellmouth opening up and some really bad magic mojo coming out. That's it. No damsels in distress or whatever. It was in Sunnydale, not LA. That's all it was. End of story."

Wesley said, "It does seem significantly different from Cordelia's visions."

“Can we talk about Buffy now?” Willow asked. “I’ve been here a lot longer than I thought I would, and I really need to catch a bus home soon.”

Cordy looked appalled. “You can’t take the bus! What if you pass out like that again on the way home? You should at least get some sleep here tonight and Angel can drive you home tomorrow night.”

Ugh. The bus ride to LA hadn't been fun, exactly, but it beat a road trip with people she didn't really know any more. But Cordy was right, she could be vamp-food if she conked out at the wrong time.

Cordy led her up to her room. She lay down on the bed, still feeling shaky. As she drifted off to sleep, she hoped she wouldn’t have nightmares.

***

She didn’t have any nightmares, just dreams about stolen kisses in the library, kisses that left her breathless, her heart pounding, and the terror of being caught just making things sexier. Only it hadn’t been Xander. She’d been kissing Giles.

She awoke, desperate and aching for release, but feeling too weird and guilty to do anything about it. Instead she took a shower, got dressed, and went downstairs to debrief Angel, Cordy, and Wesley about the Glory thing.

It was really mostly answering Wesley’s questions about how they’d fought Glory and how Buffy’s death had closed the portal (she couldn’t really answer that question to his satisfaction, probably because she still didn’t really understand it). Angel and Cordy sat through it and didn’t seem particularly interested in anything beyond the basic facts: that Buffy had died to save Dawn and the world. Cordy looked sort of shell-shocked; Angel was just impassive. Kinda weird, but maybe he was still in the “denial” phase, and his real feelings would come out later in the “anger” stage.

Finally Cordy said, “Ok, now that we’ve been over all of the magic mumbo-jumbo six times over, I’m taking Willow shopping.”

Willow wished she had a more coherent response than, "Huh?"

"The last thing Buffy would want is for you to run around in such awful clothes. Since she's not here to fix this, I will."

***

Willow stared at what seemed like an endless array of clothing racks at Nordstrom's. "How do you ever find anything here?"

Cordy said, "Hard work. But just think about the payoff. You'll look fantastic for your girlfriend." She glanced at Willow. "What did I say wrong now?”

Willow fought to keep back the tears, and lost the battle. She looked around for some place to retreat, found a bench, and sat down.

Cordy followed and sat down beside her. "Is she--okay? I thought you said she recovered from the brainsuckage."

Some automatic function of her brain sent the words to Willow’s mouth. "She’s fine. She just broke up with me." Oh, goddess, why had she said that? Cordelia would probably think Willow deserved to be dumped. And Willow couldn't blame her for feeling that way.

Cordy put an arm around Willow. Buffy had held her the same way when she’d been crushed by Oz’s betrayal. Buffy, who deserved so much more than an early death. That last thought pushed Willow from quiet, discreet crying into ugly, embarrassing crying,. Cordy patted her head and said soothing words that Willow couldn't really process. The fact that Cordy was being inexplicably nice to Willow made it even harder to stop crying.

It felt like hours later when Willow finally pushed the tears back and tried to compose herself.

Cordy stood up. “C’mon,” she said, gesturing to the clothing racks. “We have a mission. You’re going to look amazing so she knows exactly what she’s missing.”

Willow stared at her. “Is that your solution for everything? Shopping?”

Cordy grabbed Willow’s hand and pulled her up. “Well, duh. It works.”

Cordy dragged Willow over to a rack of bright blue shirts. “You should wear more jewel tones. Olive green and beige do nothing for you.”

“I read that olive green’s supposed to be a good color for redheads.”

Cordelia snorted. “You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. I remember when your hair was brown. They’re talking about natural redheads, not bottle redheads.”

Willow spied a bright red fake fur sleeveless blouse on the clearance rack. She picked it up and held it against her chest, checking herself in the mirror.

Cordelia gave her a look of unmitigated horror.

Willow grinned. “What? I thought you wanted me to wear more jewel tones.”

***

After hitting what seemed like every shopping center in L.A., she and Cordy returned to the Hyperion just before sundown. Willow had never liked shopping as much as Buffy and Cordelia had, but she was finally starting to see the appeal. It had been kind of nice having an afternoon making mundane decisions about short or long sleeves, red or blue shirts, polyester or cotton sweaters.

Cordy hugged her. "Tell Dawn that I'm sorry about Buffy."

"Wait, you're not going?" Willow wasn't sure whether to be more wigged by this kinder, gentler Cordy, or the prospect of a long drive home with just Angel.

"Someone has to make sure this place doesn’t fall apart while Angel’s gone. So good luck, and please tell me you're going to burn that awful red furry blouse you bought."

"I make no promises," Willow said.

The drive back to Sunnydale was even more awkward than she'd feared. Angel had never been exactly chatty, but this silence now was particularly oppressive. She didn't feel like she could just fill the silence with her own words. She was sure she was one wrong word away from setting him off. He'd always been so demon-y when Buffy was in danger, and she hadn't seen even a flicker of emotion from him since she'd given him the news. Sooner or later he had to erupt, and she hoped to be far away when it happened.

Finally, they reached Sunnydale, and she directed Angel to the lonely place in the woods where they'd buried Buffy.

He looked at the headstone, didn't even smile at it. Oh, God, did he think it was too flippant? Or maybe it focused too much on what Buffy did, and not so much the kind of person she was. The woman Angel loved. He must think that they were all a bunch of jerks.

Finally he said, "I don't understand. Why did I get so many second chances, when she didn't even make past her twenties? She was a good person, and I'm--. Why do the Powers work that way?"

Oh, right. The higher beings that gave Cordelia the vision thingies. Why did Angel and his team get specific instructions from them, while Buffy and the Scooby gang had to muddle through figuring out things on their own? Why didn’t the higher beings send Angel’s team to help out with Glory? Angel was right. It made no sense.

Angel sat there a few more minutes looking extra-broody.

Willow waited and thought of Buffy’s final resting place. Her body was here, of course, but where had her soul gone? Could it be in Glory’s hell dimension? Her stomach lurched at that thought. It seemed monstrously unfair that Buffy could be trapped for eternity in a hell dimension, after the sacrifice she'd made.

But what in this world was fair? Why should Willow think that fairness had anything to do with the fate of Buffy’s soul?

Angel cleared his throat, interrupting Willow’s train of thought, "I'm done here. Can I drop you off at the dorms?"

"Um, no. I'm staying at Buffy's house with Dawn. But could you drop me off at Giles's apartment? I need to talk to him first.”

Angel opened the car door for her. "Sure. I'll, um, stay in the car."

She wanted to smack herself for her own stupidity. Of course Angel hanging out in Giles's apartment would be uncomfortable for both of them. "Giles can give me a ride home. You don't have to stick around.”

Chapter 7