The next months, in fact, passed too easily for Willow. She didn’t appear to notice that anything had changed. She walked around with a half-smile on her face, caught up in memories of Tara. When Giles asked her about why she was so happy, she simply told him that “Tara loves me.” Willow used magic, but not consciously. If one of her friends was threatened, Willow would dreamily glance up and the demon or vampire would simply stop being. Willow’s withdrawal grew to greater and greater heights, and her friends finally felt they had to confront it.
Giles was working late rebuilding the Magic Box, as he did most nights, when Buffy, Xander, and Anya came to see him, glancing nervously around.
“Giles?” Buffy asked tentatively, “We’re worried about Willow. We think…we think that you should take her to the Watcher’s Council. We…we’re not sure she’s safe. For herself and for everyone else.”
Giles glanced slowly up from his work. “I am shocked at the lot of you. You have met the Council, and still you want me to take her there? They’re still deciding whether it would be best to just kill her. How can you willingly send Willow into a potential death trap? I simply cannot condone this.”
“What, do you think I like this?” Xander exploded, “Do you think that I would willingly send anyone I cared about to that group of death-dealing old British men? I love Willow, and I wish more than anything that I could deal with this myself. I wish that I could just make everything all better for her, but I can’t. Willow isn’t living in this world anymore. I can’t just sit here and watch her become a vegetable who only wakes to kill. We have to do something, Giles, please.”
“She’s scary, Giles.” Anya stepped forward. “She has more power than any human I’ve ever heard of. And she has no outlet for it. Those occasional slayings take only an infinitely small amount of her power. I was worried about how much power she had, so I did a scrying. She still has immense amount of power. But…well, there’s a drain on her. She used to have a steady stream of power into herself, but now… The power’s still coming, more than ever, but it’s leaving just as fast. She’s becoming a channel for some sort of powerful energy. I’m not even sure whether this is something she’s doing, or whether the energy is using her in some larger purpose. Frankly, she could be channeling power for some sort of apocalyptic plan and not even realize it.”
Having finished her speech, Anya looked around at the faces of Willow’s friends and was rewarded with blank astonishment.
“Anya, why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” asked Giles. “This is very important and could be potentially fata..”
“Why didn’t you tell any of us?” Xander broke in. “We should have been helping her with this all along, and now, and now Giles says she might die? Anya, you can’t do this. You have to tell us. What if Willow dies?”
“Calm down, Harris!” Anya exclaimed, “It hasn’t been doing anything to her. She’s still the same as she was a month ago, isn’t she? And I really don’t think that it’s apocalyptic. It’s white magic. It has a dark tinge, but it’s still white magic.”
“Then what is she doing?” Buffy demanded, “She sure as hell isn’t painting a picture with it! It’s got to be going somewhere. Giles, what could she be doing?”
“I’m really not sure.” Giles admitted. “It could be anything. If it’s white magic, that’s vaguely reassuring, but I’m still not sure I trust her magical control with it. I think we should find a coven to help her. Not the campus one, but a real coven. If what Anya says is true, she needs help.”
The others slowly nodded in agreement.
Back at the Summers house, Willow had finished her nightly rituals and was getting into bed. She changed into her pajamas, got in bed and turned out the light.
She snuggled down into the covers and whispered sleepily “’Night Tara.”
And from the darkness, the answer came, “Goodnight, my love.”
Edited by: darkest willow at: 5/27/04 8:10 pm
at: 5/27/04 8:45 pm
. Love sam xx