The Borders of Night Start to Give, Chapter 14/26

[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 Fourteen

Ethan

“ . . . and after all I did for him, he just pushed me away again. No gratitude for helping him bring back his precious Slayer." Ethan took another sip of beer. Atrocious, but what else could he expect in this dismal little town?

The pretty brunette sitting beside him made sympathetic noises.

"It's like I'm just a tool he thinks he can use and then put away whenever he wants."

The girl (Hedy? Hattie? Something that started with an H) said, "He sounds like a real jerk. Don't you ever wish something would happen to him?"

Ethan downed the rest of the beer. "Nice try, but I think vengeance tastes much better when you make it yourself."

She put a hand on his arm, gave him an earnest look. "But scheming is so time-consuming. Think of all the time you can save with one tiny wish."

Usually he admired persistence, but he'd reached his limit tonight. "Look, I'm here to wallow. You're here to make your quota. There are hundreds of gullible morons with sob stories out there. Go find one."

***

Tara

Tara's stomach rumbled. Xander had called an emergency Scooby meeting at the Magic Box at the last minute, and between classes and errands, she'd missed lunch.

"Where's Harris?" Spike said. "What kind of emergency is it if he can't be arsed to show up for it?"

"I'm here," Xander called out from the door. "Sorry about that. It took longer than I thought to get someone to cover my shift.” He sat down at the table. "The reason we called this meeting is that one of Anya's vengeance demon friends--"

Anya interrupted, "She prefers the term 'justice demon.'"

Xander looked irritated, but then, he always seemed that way with Anya. It made Tara cringe inside for Anya. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to date someone who rolled her eyes or sighed every time she said something.

"Whatever. The point is, this demon--"

"Hallie. Her name is Hallie."

Xander raised his arms in frustration. "Fine, Ahn. You tell the story."

"Hallie said that Giles did the resurrection spell with Ethan Rayne."

Everyone looked at Giles, except Willow, who suddenly found Drake's manual on preservation of borage flowers intensely interesting.

Giles cleared his throat. "Well, that's not entirely accurate."

Xander said, "So some of it is? Giles, what the hell? He's evil."

"I don't think the word 'evil' is appropriate. Ethan's a bit more complicated than that."

Xander rolled his eyes, "He tried to kill Buffy. And he tried to get Buffy to kill you. That meets my recommended daily allowance for evil. How could you do a major spell with him like he was someone you could trust?"

Spike chimed in, "The thing with magic, there's always consequences. People can be brought back wrong." It seemed to be part of the conversation everyone else was having, but Spike's gaze never left Buffy. Was this a return to the Slayer/vampire antagonism thing? Spike trying to get a rise out of Buffy?

Tara glanced at Buffy, who seemed more sad than angry, though it was kind of hard to tell. Buffy had been so withdrawn, almost impassive ever since Giles brought her back. Sometimes it was hard to believe she was the same person as the bubbly college student Tara met two years ago.

Willow said, "He just borrowed magic from Ethan for the spell. Giles did the spell on his own. And he got Buffy back safe and sound, and that's all that matters."

Willow knew about this? She couldn't have known beforehand. She'd been as surprised as everyone else the night that Giles brought Buffy back. Which meant that Willow must have found out afterwards. And then didn't say anything about it.

"So if everything was completely evil-free, why didn't you tell us?" Xander asked. Tara could have hugged him for asking, so she didn't have to.

Giles looked pained for a moment, then said, "My main concern was getting Buffy back, and once she was back, finding ways to fight The First. Compared to the end of the world, the details of how Buffy came back didn't seem very important."

God, Giles and Willow were even starting to sound alike now. Like the only thing that mattered were results, not what was done to achieve them. Tara’s fought a wave of nausea. She needed to talk to Willow about this.

There was more talking, and some yelling, mostly retreading the same ground, but Tara couldn't really focus on it. Then Giles said something about going out of town on business for a few days.

As the meeting broke up, Xander was still muttering about secrets while Anya tried to steer the conversation back to their wedding arrangements. Tara touched Willow’s arm and asked, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, but can we get some coffee first? I was up kinda late researching dimensional spells last night.”

They walked to the Espresso Pump and ordered. Tara sipped her Americano and waited until the other customers walked away. “You knew about this Ethan guy already, didn’t you?”

Willow said, “Yeah. Ethan made a point of telling me a couple of days ago, so I talked to Giles about it.”

Tara tried to keep her voice level. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Once Giles explained why he did it, it just didn’t seem to be that big a deal. Just Ethan stirring things up. Plus I didn’t want it to become a thing, because not everyone would understand.” Willow seemed utterly unconcerned by any of this, which just made things worse.

“I’m worried about both of you. The dark magic you’ve both been doing--it scares me.”

Willow stirred her mocha and sighed. “I know. But sometimes there are problems that the purest, whitest magic can’t solve. And when they’re ‘lots of people are gonna die’   problems or ‘the world is gonna end’ problems, it feels selfish to worry about headaches or nosebleeds or whatever the dark magic side effects are gonna be. I can always worry about me later.”

Tara said, “I’m worried that if you don’t take care of yourself, the magic will swallow you up, and you won’t realize it until it’s too late.”

Willow said, "You worry too much. I'm fine. Giles is fine."

And there was something about the fierce way Willow defended Giles from criticism that made Tara wonder, once again. "Are you sure you don't have feelings for Giles? Feelings that might be clouding your judgment about him?"

Willow said, "Like I told you--I'm not interested in men anymore. Can we talk about something else now?"

Chapter 15