Willow
POV
The
Master smiles. He seems almost pleased
to face such a challenge… This makes
me even more nervous.
He
turns towards Buffy so fast that the air screams in violation, and she flies
back as if hit with a wrecking ball, landing somewhere in the stacks, bookshelves
flying apart in her wake. She’s Buffy,
back on her feet and leaping towards him in seconds.
Xander
keeps trying to grab the Master, but the Master evades him with an ease that
defies description, as if dancing around a lumbering child. Giles is standing, almost regally, as if surveying
a carnage of his making, but I know him, it’s an act and his poise is betrayed
by his perfect stillness, as if he is unwilling to move and break this moment,
where all is not yet lost. I identify
with that feeling, also paralyzed by the power on display, the price of failure.
He looks to me, and to the others, standing paralyzed in shock or confusion
around the combat. I see the problem, they know me, have seen
what I can do, but have no idea what Giles is capable of, not yet, and they
hesitate. If he acts, he will tip
his hand, his lack of advantage.
I
change his hand. Finite players play
by the rules. Infinite players play
with the rules.
I
reach within me and the night winds rise at my call. Invisible tendrils of something that no science can explain, no
words can define, rise around Giles, swarming over his legs like serpents. He feels them, I can see it in his eyes, but
he does not react, not in front of the students. I can feel how quickly I can break him now, expose his charade,
his pose. Instead I concentrate and
for an instant I am seeing from his eyes, staring at myself, staring at him. It is so simple to sever his ties to the earth,
to rise above it, and I can feel his clothing ripple against my skin, my hair,
his hair, our hair, stirs in the cold wind. He floats now, imperious above the fray and I can see the fear in
their eyes as the minions pull back. His
power is unquantified. Even the bravest
among them, who would have charged me, and burned at my hand, now are uncertain.
I
somehow see from his eyes and my own, and I slowly turn my head to view the
battle. I am dizzied from the dual
perspective, and my elemental senses overwhelm me. The earth protests each footfall. The air around them is violated by the fury of their passing.
Their hatred, their anger is a palpable thing, black and coiling, washing
over me like waves of cold heat. Our presence violates the world on a primal
level, it bruises where we tread, it bleeds where we pass. I pull back my senses, see only flesh and leather,
hear only grunts of exertion. No clever
quips, no friendly banter. This is
war and I am more aware than any of how closely death watches this battle.
Buffy
and Xander are tag-teaming the Master, each buying the other time to attempt
an attack, each failing, but only just keeping the Master from killing any
one of them outright. I am impressed,
and strangely annoyed, at their unspoken teamwork.
Cordelia
walks past me towards an upperclassman (I think he plays football and was
chosen for his looks), clearly torn as to whom to obey, his eyes flicking
between the battle, and Giles. “What
are waiting for, graduation? Get in
there!” He looks at her, trying to
gauge her importance. She stakes him
and doesn’t even watch the body fly apart.
She
walks up to another minion, I think she's in drama. “Get. In. There.” Drama-queen
moves without question, picking up a book and throwing it at the Master.
It bounces off of him to no effect and is soundly ignored by all three
combatants. Cordelia just glares and she charges forward
with a yell.
Cordelia
turns to band-kid, who lowers his eyes and charges, lowered into a football
tackle. He is avoided without effort
by the Master and Buffy, but briefly gets in Xanders way. He is batted aside, Xander not knowing, or
caring, whose side he is on. Still,
he gets up and charges back. The last
two minions in the room, Nurse Greenleigh and Gage, charge as well and the
Master ends up striking Nurse Greenleigh so hard that she leaves a crack in
the wall where she impacts, and does not move.
The
Master swats them away almost as fast as they arrive, but is no longer able
to handle them, and Buffy, and Xander. Drama-queen
chooses that moment to attempt to sneak out. I feel Giles hand pointing at her. I concentrate on her shiny plastic pants.
Shiva dances. No one helps her extinguish the oily fire that
results, and she burns. There is no
longer any question of quarter, of backing out. Everyone fights, even Harmony is pushed into the fray by Cordelia,
and I wish I could freeze and frame the sight of the Master backhanding her
to the ground.
It’s
too much going on, so I lower Giles, the winds settle and I snap back to myself,
kinda dizzy. He takes advantage of
the mobility to walk around the edge of the fray, with calm that even I find
unnerving, and takes a large book off of the table and begins to read through
it. Almost absently, he snaps out,
“Restrain him!”
I
can’t burn him, and I know I can’t do more than annoy him, but at this point,
that’s more than Harmony is accomplishing.
I raise a hand, as if checking my nails, and a clot of darkness flies
from it, wrapping like serpents around the Masters torso, little more than
a distraction as they slither and crawl over his chest (and I know they should
have crushed his ribcage, but try not to show my disappointment at their impotence).
The
Master backhands Xander hard, and Buffy seems to fall as well, but it turns
out to be deliberate as she attempts to sweep his feet out from under him. He seems almost to float up, avoiding her sweep
like she is moving in slow motion. In
mid-air, poised like a ballerina, Harmony hits him in the back, shrieking
the whole while. I think Cordelia
threw her. Suddenly the little principal
is breaking his chair over the Master’s head, screaming something about rules
and his Sire. Wasn’t he tied up?
Buffy and Xander converge from opposite sides and fall on the Master.
They
struggle. They pin him down, Buffy
on one arm, Xander on another. Gage
on one leg, Harmony on another. He
kicks, Harmony is somewhere in the stacks, still shrieking, Giles doesn’t
even look up as she rockets over his head. Nurse Greenleigh leaps in her place, and that
leg no longer moves, and it isn’t her weight making the difference, it is
her intelligence, as she places one hand on a knee, pressing it flat, and
digs her other hand, clawlike, into the juncture between groin and thigh,
almost like she is copping a feel. The
leg is immobilized, completely. I
take back any nasty thoughts about her sire-age.
Meanwhile Gage is flopping like a fish from his other leg (dumbass),
until band-kid joins him and between them they restrain the leg that was kicking
his ass. The Master turns to Buffy
and I feel a wash of something, she seems to waver, falling back and he shakes
her loose. His leg flails out and
catches Gage in the midsection, and he flies off, band-kid still clinging
like a terrier to his thigh, but flying around anyway, powerless to restrain
the limb.
I
realize that we are going to lose and that I’ve been holding my breath all
this time. Oh God, just forget that
last part.
Xander
punches him in the head, breaking his concentration. He turns to Xander and tries to hypnotise him. Xander punches him in the head. A lot. Giles
looks up as the tiles crack under the Masters head, says, “Stop.”
Buffy says, “Stop.” Head-punching continues. I say, firmly, “Xander, enough!” He turns, eyes crazed, giggling like a madman,
“Sorry, got carried away.” Huh.
He listened. I promise to only use my power over Xander
for evil…
The
Master is unconscious. Giles orders
the Master taken to the balcony, band-kid, whose name is ‘Daniel’ apparently,
is ordered to bring a bottled water canister over, drain it, and the Master
awakens as Giles plunges a dagger into his neck and begins draining his blood
into the canister, while chanting in Latin.
Fighting is attempted. Head-punching
occurs. Blood flies over everyone.
Xander doesn’t apologize this time.
Struggling stops ‘though.
I
see Cordelia grab Harmony, and move to exit.
“We aren’t done here.” Giles
says simply. Cordelia doesn’t even
look back, tossing over her shoulder, “I am.”
Harmony looks slightly cowed at Giles expression, but they are around
the corner and out of sight in an instant.
Giles looks seriously pissed, but lacks the power to do anything. I take notes.
Gage
has a broken spine, and is making some irritating whimpering as he crawls
with his arms across the floor. Giles
looks to Nurse Greenleigh and says, “Silence him.”
She grabs a cushion off of a chair, and I think that she is going to
smother him, but instead she places it on the ground in front of him and plants
his face down into it, pinioning him by the neck. He struggles, but his cries are muffled. She doesn’t even look back to Giles, just feeling
his broken spine with her free hand. “I
don’t think this is going to heal anytime soon, and someone will have to hunt
for him.” Giles looks to Buffy. Buffy crosses over and stakes him. I can see that Nurse Greenleigh looks furious
from my vantage point, but her back is to Giles, as she rises, dusting herself
off.
I
see the principal getting to his feet finally.
He hit the card catalog and broke it with his obscene-looking head. He is looking very strangely at the tableau,
causing me to turn back, to see if I’ve missed something.
Giles
drains the rest of the blood from the Master directly, strips off his leather
jacket (ew, ugly Master chest, not sexy), and then severs his head with the
dagger. Dust flies. A skull drops to the floor (and a skeleton
remains on the balcony, weird, never seen that before). Giles uses his dagger to slash out the sleeves
of the Masters leather jacket, and pulls it over his own torso, after removing
his jacket. It would never fit, but
with the sleeves slashed out and it not being pulled closed, he can at least
get it over his shoulders.
Giles
pours the blood from the container into the skull, chanting again, then drains
it from the skull and crushes it in his hand, speaking words in Latin. Something about an Aurelius and putting on
his cloak or mantle or something. We
don’t have any classes in Latin, so I have to make do with what I can learn
online. The Masters leather jacket
begins to smolder, and Buffy looks at me accusingly, but I raise my hands
and step back, trying to convey that I’m not doing it.
I
realize at that moment what is happening, “Wait a damned second!” This was my plan, I sent Buffy to get Giles, I sent Xander to get Cordelia,
and as much as I don’t want to admit it, we wouldn’t have won without her. This should be mine!
The
Masters jacket doesn’t ‘wait a damned second,’ it just burns off of him, and
his own vest and shirt are scorched. It
doesn’t burst into flame, just chars and glows, falling away as embers that
fall to ash as they hit the floor. Giles
seems to burst with power and rises, eyes wild. He looks paler, his nails thicker, his face
in full vampiric display. Even when
it finally fades, he looks different, still paler, still with nails almost
like claws, his hair, paradoxically, longer.
He turns to me, clearly recognizing my outrage, “You have a complaint?”
His voice is different. I’d
almost swear there is an echo in here, the tweedy little librarian in his
smoldering clothes, somehow seeming to be a twelve foot tall god of war in
this light…
Discretion,
they say, is the better part of valor. I
decide that shutting the hell up is the better part of not getting my head
twisted off. I’m not shy little Willow
anymore, and this sure as hell isn’t Giles.
I
cross to him, note the dagger next to him on the table, note Buffy clinging
to his side, possessively. Slut, two
days dead and you’ve already fucked Xander and Giles? It’s not like… Oh wait,
never mind, I guess it is like that, since I also ‘tested the plumbing’ on
my first night dead, and obviously Xander did as well. Guess it’s a recently embodied demonic priority. Eh, she’s a slut anyway.
Time
not to be a minion.
“Nice
dagger,” I say neutrally, running my hand over it, but not picking it up. Giles looks distracted, almost as if he is
just remembering it. “Yes, the ritual
required a dagger that has been used before…”
I finish quickly, “to take a life?
One that is attuned to the forces of death?”
Giles
looks, not impressed, more annoyed. “Quite
so.” Hmm, wrong tack?
“I don’t recall permitting you to read any texts that would contain
such information.” God, what a pedant. “Well,
what can I say. Evil.”
I turn around, show him my back as I start to walk away, leaving the
dagger where it lay. “I’ll read what
I want.” There, small hint of rebellion.
Seed planted.
I
feel like I’ve been hit by a truck and the world just flies by on all sides.
Something hard hits me in the face, in the chest and I am sliding.
I hear a crunch and stars of pain dance around me, unfolding around
me like newborn galaxies. That would
be a neat effect, if it didn’t hurt so much.
I can’t catch my breath.
I
recover, and am in the hallway, the half-shattered remains of one of the library
doors beneath me. I’m pretty sure
I blacked out. After a frantic second
trying to breathe, I remember that I don’t have to. Stupid. I
hear sounds behind me, and I get to my knees to see Giles standing over Xander,
who is pinned beneath his foot facedown, growling and raging incoherently.
Buffy looks stunned, outraged, and her face is bloodied.
I can’t tell which of them is going to kill Xander first… It looks like the little principal is growling
something and Buffy has to turn to restrain him. He’s like a little bulldog.
“Don’t!”
I shout, not even sure why, but he’s mine and I’ll fight for him. Giles turns, Buffy tosses Snyder (that was
his name, not Skinner, just remembered) over the desk and looks back to Xander,
but she doesn’t move either. “Why
not?” Giles says, as if the question is a test.
I
recognize this test. I pass all the
tests. I don’t get up, but rise to
my knees, attempt to look contrite, “Because we can’t do this without you
to lead us.” He looks leery. “Please Giles.” His face hardens, “Please who?”
In my mind an endless wave of acid carries him away until he is a tiny
flailing speck in a sea of burning corrosion. He burns like a torch, trying vainly to pat
out the flames, which laugh like tiny demons as they dance over him. Tendrils of darkness leap from the shadows
and tear him into shreds, carrying the bloody gobbets out of sight. “Please. Master.”
Xander stops struggling, just goes limp.
Giles lifts his leg and Xander doesn’t bother to move, just lies there,
clearly exhausted, clearly beaten, not because he is beaten, but because I am. His eyes are accusing.
Buffy seems wild, still outraged, momentarily angry even at Giles for
denying her this. I think she wanted to see Xander die, for hitting
her, for fucking her, for failing her. But
a touch from Giles and she backs off. I never thought I’d live to see the day that Buffy was a minion.
Well, okay, I didn’t live to see the day, technically.
I
get up slowly, trying to look whipped, not feeling much like I’m not, and
cross to Xander, directly in front of Giles, lean down, face down, so that
they won’t have the satisfaction of seeing me wince in pain as I do, and raise
him to his feet. He doesn’t look at
Giles, or at me. He does shoot a look
to Buffy, and it is the sort of look that you can’t take back. One of them is going to die. Giles
seems almost amused by this, and makes no move to defuse the situation, forcing
me, again, to eat the crow. Yum.
Not gonna be enough of you left for the crows, Rupert...
I half-drag Xander out of there, into the hallway. I can’t even budge him, but he doesn’t really resist, just doesn’t
really help. I wait until I am around
the door before I lean on him and he finally recognizes how hurt I am. Suddenly he is Xander again and he practically
carries me out.
I’ve
completely forgotten that Amy is still cowering in the cage.