by Sassette » Sun Apr 28, 2002 3:30 am
Okay - sorry that took so long - but here it is ... the long-awaited Bloody Cliffhanger. Not that there's a LOT of blood, but there's blood. *evil cackling*
Answering Darknes 52c
Then she remembered - all of it, and she thought she might be sick again. She clamped down on the feeling, her mind tumbling around as she rose unsteadily to her feet.
She had to find Tara.
She just hoped she wasn't too late.
Spike’s coat was still wrapped around her, though certainly more water-logged than when it had been handed over. Her jeans and shirt were soaked, her feet practically swimming in her shoes. She spun slowly, looking around the room.
It was a cave of some sort, with no apparent exit. At least, she mused, it was warm. Sometime during her dreaming, her limbs had thawed somewhat, and the feeling had returned. But how long had she been out? Was she too late?
The floor was hard rock, but the walls were just dirt. Behind her, though, was a solid wall of water, somehow not spilling into the room. On one level, she would have liked to study it – to learn and to know how it could exist anywhere.
But clearly the laws of physics didn’t apply to Hell, and it didn’t matter, did it? All that mattered was finding a way out of this place.
It wasn’t underwater, and she wasn’t drowning, though. That was a plus. Her eyebrows raised up as she took stock of her situation.
She had that kind of ‘pins and needles’ feeling in her hands and feet as the circulation returned, she was soaked, in a cave in Hell with no apparent exit, and there was no Tara to be seen.
A wave of hopelessness washed over her. Had she escaped the water to die alone in a cave? Had she gotten through so much only to fail now?
Her jaw set and clenched, her eyes narrowing and her brows drawing together her, the familiar feeling of her ‘resolve face’ filling her with renewed purpose. Hopelessness was irrelevant. It didn’t matter whether or not it was impossible for her to succeed. It was impossible for that wall of water to be there without spilling into the room, and that happened – she’d just have to go save Tara whether it was possible or not.
Because … she loved Tara.
It was a profound and simple truth, achingly sweet in how it struck her just then. She knew it – had known it for years. Had, probably, known it in other lifetimes and would know it in lifetimes to come. It was timeless in its constancy, yet brief, as this one lifetime was brief when compared to the infinite cosmos.
It was all-encompassing, completely consuming, yet a piece of her she could keep tucked away, safe from the cruelties and vagaries of life on the Hellmouth. It was her anchor and her shelter, and it gave her strength.
And so she thought about it – thought about loving Tara – like she hadn’t stopped and really thought about it in far too long.
Because she needed the strength. She needed to be something greater than she had always thought herself – she needed to stop being the plain old Willow she had always been, and could not be the super-Willow who tossed around magick. She had to be the Willow who loved Tara, and that, she found, was the strongest Willow of all.
Willow felt that love welling up inside her – felt it tugging in a specific direction. To Tara. Tara was straight ahead, through the crumbling earthen wall. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she didn’t question it. She and Tara always knew how to find one another – in that respect the Cheshire Cat had been right.
“I didn’t happen to do a bunch of drugs, did I?” she wondered aloud, remembering the vivid imagery from her dream.
Her feet propelled her forward, and her hand raised up, touching the warm dirt. A large clod of it fell away, and she pushed, her face twisting into a curious frown. Her hand broke through easily into an empty space behind and a small smile crosed her face.
She could do this – she could do the impossible, and with that thought she started clearing away the loose dirt.
After just a few moments, her impatience with the task grew, and she awkwardly untied the sling holding her arm in place. She flexed her arm a bit, noting that it still oozed out the dark magicky liquid, then tucked it into the free sleeve of Spike’s coat. But it didn’t matter, she mused as she re-wrapped it, forgoing the sling and just covering the cuts. As long as Tara was okay, what happened to her wasn’t important.
Now with two hands, she started working again, ignoring the twinges of pain where the skin surrounded her gashes stretch and pulled. In a way, the discomfort was welcome, reminding her that she was very much alive – that she had somewhere to be – someone to save.
She continued working, her hands pulling away handful after handful of dirt as her mind inevitably wandered. What, exactly, had that whacky dream been about? The bit with Glory as the Queen of Hearts seemed obvious, her role as the bloodthirsty queen easily reconciled with the Scoobies’ real life experiences with the Hell God.
But Anya as the White Rabbit?
What was that all about?
She shrugged mentally, digging deeper and deeper, until a hole about the size of her head formed. She poked her head through, looking around, seeing a tiny narrow tunnel going off into the distance. It seemed to be going the correct way, so she redoubled her efforts, tearing at the earth, her hands becoming caked with the stuff, gathering up around and under her fingernails.
The Trickster as the Cheshire Cat made sense. She had never trusted the damn thing, and always wondered why Alice was so eager to do what it said. Its eerie smiley face, and the way it stood on its own head – that was just wrong. She frowned.
But the Mad Hatter with the broken teapot puzzled her. With one last grunt, she pulled down a big chunk of dirt, looking at her work with a sense of satisfaction. She’d have to crawl through the tunnel on her belly, but she had cleared an entrance she could just squeeze through, starting at about her waist’s height up the wall.
She crawled in, the small space closing around her, and started moving, her shoulders brushing the walls. It was incredibly slow going, as she really couldn’t get her knees under her at all, and pretty much had to just drag her lower body along using her forearms to move.
She inched along, her mind replaying the scenes from her dream, turning them this way and that trying to make sense of them. But they had been so weird – how could they make any sense? Somehow, though, she thought that they probably did. It was probably all symbol-y and meaningful, and was her subconscious’ way of trying to clue her in to something important.
But she hadn’t finished the damn crossword puzzle, so it was probably a moot point.
In a way, though, she felt like she had just walked into a classroom without having done the assigned reading, and for the first time had no idea what the topic of discussion was. The teacher was probably going to start talking, and she’d have no idea what she was talking about, and – and … God, the teacher would probably know she hadn’t done the reading, and then call on her.
Shaking her head, she sighed, inwardly cursing her strange obsession with classrooms. Other people didn’t do that – they didn’t compare their whole life to school. Then again, other people weren’t Willow Rosenberg.
She inched along, keeping her head down and moving forward – always forward. It was too cramped to really go back – but it wasn’t like she would go back even if she could. Tara was ahead, and so that’s where she needed to be.
Still, her brain kept calling up the cards and the forest, the tea party and the fair. And she kept on, feeling bits of dirt from the top of the tunnel falling on her head, and the waistband of her jeans scooping it up as she dragged herself onward.
First thing she’d do when she got home, after kissing Tara senseless, was take a shower. She >so< needed a shower. And if she was lucky, she could talk Tara into joining her. Yeah, that would be nice. Tara. Warm water. Soapy goodness. Naughty touching.
She sighed softly, her mind filling with Tara. The discomfort of the cramped space and the dusty air fell away, a peace settling within her as she thought of Tara’s laughter, her soft smiles, the way her eyes glowed when Willow told her she loved her.
Nothing could touch that – nothing could take that from her. Not even a God.
With that, she began moving faster, her mind turning over the logistics of crawling through a tiny tunnel and coming up with the most efficient movements to cover the most ground. She nodded a little in satisfaction when she thought she had it all figured out … her arm would go like so, and she could get a little traction with her toes, and she moved, managing to pick up her pace significantly.
But still, it was too slow. Everything was just too slow.
She started to get frustrated, and her breathing became labored as she squeezed her way through the tiny space. How far had she moved? A few feet? A mile? She honestly had no idea, nor now long she had been crawling.
A moan sounded, and she paused, cocking her head to one side and listening intently. Another one, then another, coming from all around her.
Where was that noise coming from? She cringed as she continued, each sound of torment creeping in her ears and striking terror into her heart. Underneath the echo of voices, she could hear a subtle shifting – a rustling like earth was being moved aside, scraped out of the way.
There was something moving in the walls.
No, many somethings, and they were in pain, scared and alone. She somehow thought they didn’t mean her any harm, but she couldn’t be sure, and a fresh wave of fear washed over her, sending a shudder down her spine. Visions of creepy crawly things with too many legs and eyes skittered across her brain, and she had to pause for a moment, taking a few deep breaths and willing the trembling in her limbs to subside.
But she was getting closer. She could feel it.
A deep rumbling filled the world around her, and she felt the vibrations of the moving earth throughout her whole body. She snapped her head up, her eyes wide with fear. What now?
“You’re trapped, Willow. You’re falling for his trap,” a deep resounding voice echoed through the earth, as if coming from the ground itself, surrounding her and pouring through her.
“No,” Willow said, shaking her head lightly, then continuing on despite the disturbing shaking.
“He’s a God, Willow. Do you really believe that you’re a match for him?”
“I am. I have to be,” Willow grunted, her sense of urgency rising up to a fevered pitch as she scratched and clawed and made her way as fast as she was able along the tunnel.
“You can’t save her – you’re not enough to save her. The Trickster saved her last time. You were just his instrument, and now you think you can defeat him?” the voice mocked, finding Willow’s weak spots and torturing them mercilessly.
A soft cry escaped Willow as she continued to scrabble along through the dirt, whimpering with pain. “I have to be enough … I have to be enough,” she chanted over and over as the voice continued.
“Did you think you had that kind of power? That you could just stick your fingers in a Hell God’s head and return Tara to herself? No, you couldn’t.”
“I could … I did,” Willow gasped, the tunnel starting to rise. The new incline made the route tougher, but she kept on, twisting and turning frantically and edging forward.
“It was The Trickster – it was always him. He was the one that made you worthwhile. Without him, you’re nothing.”
“No!” Willow cried out, panting with exertion as she continued onward and upward, bits of dirt loosening from the walls and sliding against her skin. “I won. Glory said that I won – that I defeated her. I saved Tara. She was lost, and I found her.”
“That was a dream – just a dream. Glory knew – how could she not? She knew, in the last, that The Trickster defeated her. She could taste the flavor of his power when your fingers were inside her skull.”
“I’m not listening to this,” Willow muttered, closing her eyes tight and making her way by feel. “I’m not listening.” It was childish and stupid, but she just wanted to stop and put her fingers in her ears and sing ‘la la la’ until the stupid voice went away – she wanted the words to stop. She needed the words to stop. But Tara was still ahead – the words didn’t matter, she told herself, over and over. They didn’t matter. Tara mattered. She had to keep going.
“You can’t defeat him,” the voice pressed.
“Tara can,” Willow said, a her mouth forming into a tight grim line. “I just need to give her a reason to try,” she muttered, moving onward. She was getting closer, she knew. She could tell – she could feel it.
Tara.
“You’ll die,” the voice rumbled. “Are you so eager to meet your end?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Willow answered automatically, concentrating on moving forward.
The shaking and rumbling intensified, and Willow closed her eyes against the grit as the tunnel filled with dust. It covered her hair and face, seeping into her lungs as she breathed and making her cough. Cautiously, she let her eyes open just a bit, but she couldn’t see anything but falling dirt as it rained down around her.
Desperately, she pressed on, moving through the cloud of earth in the air, pushing past the piles of it that were accumulating in her path. She couldn’t stop now – had to keep going – had to keep pushing.
More and more fell, gathering on her shoulders and sliding down the collar of Spike’s coat, onto her neck. The shaking continued, on and on, until Willow felt a little dizzy and like she was going to be sick – again, but still she moved forward.
The passage became harder and harder to get through, as she had to shove more and more dirt out of her way, with hardly any space to put it and push her way through, until finally she was completely enclosed – entombed deep within the earth, frantically trying to scratch her way out.
A small whimper escaped her throat, her eyes screwed up tight. She was trapped, just like the voice said. She was buried alive. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest and her breathing was labored as the little pocket of air around her rapidly grew stale.
A stray thought entered through her mind, and she wondered if Buffy had been this scared? Had Buffy felt everything she was feeling now? The terror and panic?
“You deserve this,” the voice said, its tone one of finality and judgement. “Pay your penance, Willow. You must pay for your crimes.”
“No, I never meant –“ Willow whispered, tears stinging her eyes.
“You left her there, alive and buried.”
“I didn’t know … I didn’t know,” Willow said, pleading with someone – anyone – to absolve her of the guilt she felt crashing around her as surely as the earth had done so moments before.
“You didn’t think – hadn’t planned for it. You would have left her buried there regardless,” the voice accused, and Willow could not deny it. How stupid had she been to leave the coffin in the grave? How thoughtless? How …
But no – if she had known, she never would have left Buffy. She never would have let Buffy go through the pain and torture of crawling out of her own grave.
But she had, hadn’t she? Did it matter if she meant it? No – the damage was done. She had to pay. It was the price she had to pay for the terrible things she had done to Buffy.
She cried, shaking with remorse and pain, her grief and guilt at her actions ripping through her. It was right. It was just. She deserved this.
She had to pay.
A tiny little voice in the back of her mind reminded her that she’d never see Tara again, and Willow’s sobs redoubled. Never see Tara? The pain of that was so sharp she was surprised she couldn’t feel a wave of warm blood washing over her body.
Still, she deserved it. She was bad … she was a bad person, and she deserved to never see Tara again. It was right, and it was good that she be punished like this.
“Oh, God,” Willow groaned, her eyes widening. With a start, she shook off her guilt, forcibly pushing it down deep within her. Maybe she did deserve this, but Tara didn’t. Tara didn’t deserve to be subjected to whatever The Trickster had in store. Tara didn’t deserve to be tricked into performing dark magick, or to unwittingly unleash an unspeakable evil on the world.
With a shout, Willow started tearing and clawing at the earth, pushing it away – any which way – it didn’t matter. Her movements were frantic and wild, the skin of her hands breaking against the hard use she put it through as she cried and pulled, inching her way through the dirt.
The voice returned to her, but she blocked it out. She wouldn’t listen to its outright lies and half-truths. She couldn’t afford to – not if she wanted to save Tara.
And she had to. She just had to.
She grunted and screamed her pain as she continued on, her fierce attack of the earth making headway. She was making progress, but she barely noticed, her whole world and focus narrowing down to the next handful of dirt, then the next, and the next after that. She cleared a space, then moved into it, then cleared a space again, and again and again.
And it wasn’t just Tara she was fighting for. The whole world needed this – needed her, Willow Rosenberg, to keep the cosmic balance from skewing further, until it could not be repaired.
But didn’t cosmic balance have a way of maintaining itself? She let the train of thought distract her as her body continued moving automatically, the earth falling away before her fierce determination. The entire cosmos, she decided, was on her side, and while that was no guarantee, it was a comforting thought.
Until a horrible realization washed over her, and the import of her dreams hit her with an intensity so sudden and shocking that her body stilled for a moment.
She knew what it meant – the broken teapot, the Mad Hatter – all of it.
For the first time in her life, she cursed the knowledge, wishing she could make it just go away. With a new fervor that shocked even her with its intensity, she continued.
She knew what would happen when Tara completed the ritual – when she unleashed the dark magicks.
She knew exactly what it would do – and it was something The Trickster hadn’t planned on at all.
And, God help her, she had to stop it. Tara couldn’t go through that – couldn’t be that. It would hurt her in ways that Willow didn’t want to contemplate, her worst fears realized.
But she was getting closer, she knew it. She could feel Tara – could feel the energy seeping all around, that was both something she recognized and something deeper, darker – sinister.
She continued digging and digging, her hand finally breaking the surface, and a rush of fresh air hitting her, and a weak feeble light.
Still it was light, and she started yelling, begging Tara to stop – to not finish the ritual she had so clearly started.
“God, no … Tara, baby,” she called out, digging the whole wider and wider. “Don’t do this – please, God – baby, you can’t … you can’t!” She kept yelling and digging – digging and yelling, until finally – oh, God, finally – the whole was big enough that she could crawl her way out.
She was in a cave, cool and dark, the shadows deep and mysterious. Her eyes quickly found Tara, instantly taking in the familiar circle of candles, a book open on an altar before her, and a jet black athame in her hand where she knelt naked.
“Tara, no!” Willow yelled again, her upper body free of the hole as she continued climbing. Her desperation and fear for her lover tore through her, a wave of anger and pain following closely on its heels, and she could feel her eyes grow black.
Tara raised the athame, her chanting continuing, her left hand pressed palm down upon the altar, her fingers splayed. With a grunt, Willow pulled herself forward, her legs clearing the hole, and she gained her feet, her mind looking for a trick, a plan, a spell – anything – to stop what Tara was about to do.
Tara’s eyes raised just then, meeting Willow’s, and Willow’s breath caught in her throat.
Tara’s eyes … those beautiful blue eyes … were the deepest shade of black – so deep and so dark that Willow thought she would fall into them, and never ever escape.
A tear made its way down Tara’s face as she prepared to unleash the darkness within her – the darkness she had always feared – and the athame lowered, shaking unsteadily.
“God, Tara, no,” Willow called again, shaking herself from the spell of Tara’s eyes and rushing forward, just as the keen edge of the athame cut into the flesh of the pinky of Tara’s left hand.
Time seemed to slow for Willow, her whole being focused on the edge of the cruel blade, parting and spitting Tara’s skin. A bead of blood welled up under the edge, slipping down Tara’s finger and striking the altar, a deep resonating sound rising.
It was too late.
A crash, and Tara doubled over, her arms clasping her stomach, then a flash of blinding light centering in Tara’s chest burst forth, then was gone.
Willow blinked twice, then her vision cleared, her breath catching as the huddled blonde form in front of the altar began to stir.
Where Tara had been, Glory rose, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
Willow felt her knees buckle, her legs no longer able to support her as all the blood drained from her face, and she fell. “No, oh God, no,” she groaned out, more tears leaking from her eyes and streaming down her dirty face.
“Hey, Tricky,” Glory said, ignoring Willow and looking into the shadows. “There’s no place like home.”
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I Think The Hellmouth Tastes Like Chicken -- Autumn
TOGETHER, in the same spot! YAY!
FINALLY! YAY!
OHHH GOD DONT TELL ME! I dont thing i could handle the second choice.