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punch_kicker15Author: 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 
Chapter Seven
Giles
When Willow finally showed up at his door, Giles felt a palpable sense of relief. Angel wouldn’t intentionally let any harm come to Willow while she was in LA. But terrible things seemed to happen to people in Angel's proximity with a rather alarming frequency.
"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked. "Cordelia called and said that you fainted."
"Fainted is such a dramatic word," she said. "My knees just got a little dizzy, and I was distracted by a really intense vision of the Hellmouth opening up. Lots of nasty magical energy, pretty scary, and I don't have any other helpful details."
"Do you think you could try to replicate it?" he asked.
She looked at him as if he were crazy, but sat down cross-legged on the couch. "I was doing my connecting-to-the-earth exercise before it started."
He sat down beside her. She closed her eyes and for a few minutes it seemed this was going nowhere--she could be meditating or even sleeping.
Then she started shaking all over, and teetered on the edge of the couch. Giles moved closer and put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. As soon as he touched her, he could feel her fear overwhelming her. He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, a stabilizing force against the unrelenting power of her vision.
As he held her, he got flashes of what she was seeing. He saw eyeless Bringers attacking a dark haired girl no more than five years old. The vision faded out for a moment, and a swarm of demons came roaring out of the Hellmouth, searching out humans, draining a few, and tearing apart the others. There was something familiar about them, but he couldn't quite place it. Bringers joined the fray, and dark magic crackled in the air around Willow, choking the life out of her.
Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. Had to get her out--there was no telling what dying in the vision might do to her.
"Willow!" His mouth had gone dry, and his voice sounded small and distant, but she heard him. She pulled her magic back, and the vision slowly dissolved. She was still trembling, and he could see tears in her eyes.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm just--that was kinda intense. And scarier than the first one." She tried to smile for him, but he could hear the strain in her voice. "Giles, do you know what those demons were?"
"They looked like illustrations I've seen of Turok-Han vampires. There's a myth that Turok-Han are an ancient race of vampires. They were legendary as primordial, ferociously powerful killing machines."
Willow shifted her arm under his, slightly, but didn’t move away. "If they're mythological, does that mean that it's just a really weird dream, or maybe something like me tripping out on magic?"
"It's possible," he said. But there were also non-mythological parts of her vision. "The eyeless men were Bringers. Buffy encountered them a few years ago. They're the foot soldiers of The First Evil." Categorization, knowledge, these were his lifelines when the world threw out one apocalyptic challenge after another. Even when it seemed like the next one would break them all.
Willow choked out a brittle laugh. “Man, Evil never takes a vacation." Then, in a smaller voice, she asked, "How are we going to fight them without Buffy?"
He searched for the right reassuring words, but she wasn't a child any more. She was one of Buffy's warriors, as dedicated to the fight as he was. Far more essential to the fight than he was, now that she’d grown into her power. She deserved the truth, no matter how devastating it could be.
"I don't know," he said, his voice breaking a little. "There may be a new Slayer out there, but there was only one Buffy Summers."
Willow nodded. "Thanks for not sugarcoating it." She looked to be holding back her tears by force of will alone.
They sat huddled together on the couch, his arms still around her. He shouldn't be holding her. Not with the memory of the healing spell fresh in his mind. She seemed unfazed by the contact. He shifted slightly away from her, and she moved with him.
He slid his hand under her hair, ran his fingers down the back of her neck. She sighed and leaned back into his touch.
This was getting uncomfortably close to a vivid dream he’d had about her last night. Just as Giles told himself to gently move away, she turned to him and kissed him. A soft brush of her lips against his, turning his world inside out.
He grabbed her by her shoulders, pushing her away as gently as he could. He hoped she wouldn’t notice how much his hands were shaking. “This is a terrible idea.”
“Why?” she asked. “The world might end tomorrow. I want one night that’s about just feeling good. I want it to be with someone I trust, someone who understands me. I thought you might want that too.”
She was inching closer to him.
He told himself to move, to keep some safe space between them. He didn’t budge. “Willow, I value our friendship, and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Giles, you were seriously talking about killing Dawnie, and we’re still friends. There’s nothing we can do tonight that can change that.”
He sighed. “Are you sure this isn’t some--remnant--of the spell the other day?”
She said, “I’m sure. I checked things out with Catherine, and I've been big with the grounding exercises ever since. This isn’t about magic.”
He looked in her eyes for any doubt, and didn't see any. He couldn’t look away--her eyes were such a beautiful dark green, with little flecks of brown, blue and gold in them.
“Please, Giles, I just need--”
He'd demanded so much of her, and would doubtless demand even more from her later; it felt wrong to deny her any comfort or affection she needed from him now.
He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her. She tasted of cinnamon gum and tears.
She kissed him back with surprising intensity, one hand gripping the back of his neck, the other unbuttoning his shirt. He gasped and pulled her closer, and somehow he ended up on top of her, driving his hips between her legs. She kissed him harder, pressed back against him. He slid his hands under her shirt, reveling in the feel of soft skin under his palms.
He ached to remove the last barriers of clothing between them, but couldn’t bear to pull himself away from her long enough to do it. Suddenly she tensed and shuddered, wrapping her legs tightly around him, burying her face against his neck. He kissed the top of her head and waited for her to come down.
"Upstairs?" he whispered. She nodded.
***
It didn’t last as long as he’d have liked.
It had been more than a year since he'd made love, and his body was starved for it. And both of them were exhausted, hardly up for a marathon.
Still, when it was over, she smiled at him and kissed him tenderly, looking more relaxed than he'd seen her in months. He lay on his side and pulled her close as she drifted off to sleep.
When he was sure she was asleep, he stroked her hair and whispered, "I love you."
***
Willow
Willow woke with a sense of unease. Something was wrong with the bed, or the sounds of the room, or--the person holding her. She shifted slightly on the bed, waking him up. He looked at her with soft eyes, and then kissed her.
The kiss brought her right back to last night's--activities. She’d wanted to be close to someone she trusted, someone who understood her, and Giles seemed the only person in the world who understood her. She hadn’t expected the sex to be bad, exactly, just not nearly as amazing as what she’d felt with Tara. But that wasn’t what had happened.
She was gay, and she’d slept with Giles, and she’d enjoyed it. Those three things didn’t make any sense together.
It was probably just the emotions of last night. Now that there was some distance from her despair, she’d remember that she liked girls--only girls--but his kisses were jolting her back into the present. His lips were warm and soft, and just so kissable. This was not the kind of thing she was supposed to like anymore, but when he rolled her over, his weight pressing her against the mattress, she felt a surge of heat pulse down her spine.
She shouldn't be turned on by anything that was happening now. Giles's mouth moved down to her breast, teasing her nipple with his tongue--and it felt like her whole body was on fire. She slid her hand between his thighs, then further up, watching him shudder at she wrapped her hand around him.
Last night was already done. It wasn't like one more time would make anything that much worse. She finally let go of the “should” thoughts as he pushed inside her.
Willow gasped with each thrust. It just felt so perfect, so right, every time he slid inside her. She wrapped her legs around his back, pulling him in deeper. He groaned and started thrusting harder, faster, and she pushed her hips up to meet his, her desire building until the wave crashed down on her. He continued pushing inside her, sending aftershocks through her.
He kissed her fiercely, pushed deep inside her, and came with a cry. They lay entangled together for a few moments, then Giles tightened his arms around her, kissing her neck. He murmured, "I can ask Anya to handle the shop on her own today, if you'd like to stay."
It was way more tempting than it should have been. But then an odd feeling of panic blossomed in her chest. She tried the deep breathing exercise Catherine had taught her, but they didn’t seem to slow her heart down.
It felt like she’d cheated on Tara, even though they were technically broken up. Last night everything had felt so hopeless. This morning it felt like she’d given up on Tara way too fast. Maybe there was something she could do to fix her magic and make Tara want to take her back.
She retreated into nervous babble. "It’s not like I don’t--I just shouldn't--I mean, I still love Tara. It would just be--weird.”
He looked--disappointed? Hurt? She wasn't sure. He turned toward the nightstand, and fumbled around for his glasses; she couldn’t see his face, and couldn't really study his expression and figure out what was wrong.
Last night she’d felt like a weary soldier in a war that never ended, desperate for a connection with someone close to her. She thought he’d felt the same way. Could he actually have been hoping for more?
But that was ridiculous. When Giles was interested in someone, it was obvious for anyone to see. He’d been so cute and stammery around Ms. Calendar. And ok, maybe not so stammery around Olivia, but his interest was still really clear to anyone who knew him.
Besides, Willow wasn’t the kind of girl that people fell for. Except for Oz and Tara.
Giles probably thought she'd used him to make herself feel better. And she did feel a lot better. That was a really crummy thing for her to do to a close friend who was also grieving and sad and lonely. And mentioning Tara when she was in bed with Giles? Kinda tacky.
"I'm sorry," she said, in a small voice. "I don't regret last night, or um, this morning, I just shouldn't--"
He turned around and touched her hand. "It's all right, Willow. Sometimes, when we're under great stress, we make mistakes." It was his gentlest voice, the one he used when she was in the depths of insecurity.
So he thought that extending the one-night stand was a mistake, too. That made things a little easier on her conscience. But not much.
She pulled the sheet around her. Modesty was kind of a lost cause at this point, but she felt a little more comfortable covered up.
“I'll see you at patrol tonight?” she asked. “I think I’m ready to try out telepathy in the field.”
“Of course,” he said.
***
Giles
After Willow left, Giles went out for a run. He wanted to run to the point of exhaustion, but his calf cramped up after eight miles. He limped back to his flat.
He let the shower water heat until it felt close to scalding, and then stepped under the spray. He scrubbed at his skin viciously, watching it turn red.
The only surprising thing about this morning was that he’d been foolish enough to expect any other result.
Of course Willow would hope to reconcile with Tara. Did he really think that Willow would want a relationship with a man twice her age, one with nothing but a history of terrible mistakes and failed relationships? Apparently, some part of him had. He was pathetic.
He'd thought Willow had needed him, but he wasn't what she needed at all. He'd been blinded by his own desire. He couldn’t even call it love. If he truly loved Willow, he'd never have jeopardized her chance to mend her relationship with Tara.
She’d been vulnerable, and he’d used her.
He stuck his head under the shower, his heart pounding as the water scalded him. He stood under the spray until the heat left him dizzy and lightheaded.
As he dried off, he thought about what to do next. If he considered Willow’s emotional needs first and foremost, the best thing to do was to avoid her and give her space to regroup.
But, as usual, everyone’s emotional health had to come second to the practical needs of defending the Hellmouth. He and Willow had to keep working together, but he’d keep things as distant and professional as possible.
He got dressed, made some toast, and sat down to start the day’s research session.
Chapter 8
