Willow POV

“How you turn my world, you precious thing,

you starve and near exhaust me.

Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.

I move the stars for no one.”

In the hall, I find myself leaning against a wall, hanging my head. Xander looks so normal right now, so concerned. But his eyes are wrong. Normally I would not be frightened at the way he checks me over, to see where I am hurt. The little sympathetic noises he makes, the gentle touches, they aren’t soothing, they’re almost like a distraction, to mask his true interest, in exactly how weak I am. I can’t take this. Even Xander. His eyes are cold, searching, no matter how genuine the rest of him seems. I realize that I can’t ever be weak in front of him. It’s too much temptation.

I push off the wall, growling, “I’m fine.” He looks shocked, hurt, and I have no idea if I am reading it into him, reading my own ambition, my own hunger into his honest face, but also somewhat relieved. Is it relieved that I am fine? Or relieved that he doesn’t have to challenge me yet, doesn’t have to be the alpha just now?

I have no idea if I can handle this. Giles, Buffy, freaking Cordelia, and now even Xander? I should have known I wouldn’t be the only one who grew more than a pair of fangs…

I hear scrabbling behind us and it seems that Snyder is following us, sticking back. A spy for Giles? Who cares. I’ll kill him if he crosses me. He can’t challenge my authority. And if he does, I might as well just lie down and die.

What’s this? I see something on the way out, in the trophy cabinet. It practically oozes dark power, so much so that I can’t even make out what exactly it is until I get closer. A cheerleading trophy? Officially weird, even by Sunnydale standards, I’ve found the lost icon of the patron demon-goddess of cheerleaders. I always knew there had to be one… Reaching towards it, I feel the glass just shatter as my hand grasps the trophy. I can feel the rush of power within it, contained, smoldering. Catherine ‘the Great’ Madison, it reads. I should have known.

I reach into it and begin to pull the magic apart, unwind it like a ball of yarn and pull it into myself. Faster and faster, so much power that I lose control. The little ball of yarn in my mind is now large as worlds and spinning like the earth, so fast, so hot, I can’t hold on. The trophy melts in my hands and I can’t let go. I feel my skin blister and suddenly someone pushes me aside. Someone inside me seems to erupt forth and I can feel the hot power tearing out of my skin, ripping me in half.

My head clears and I am fine, I’m not in two bloody halves, with Athena standing fully armored before me. I am steaming slightly, and a very rumpled looking Catherine Madison is sitting on her ass, blinking at me owlishly. Xander tilts his head and just looks at us, as if trying to process this new development. I realize that I’ve come to expect the fast mindless violence from him and am unprepared to actually get to talk before he leaps.

“As I live and breathe! Or, not, and not.” I say, with a smile. A new source of magic to drain, which I just the sort of pick-me-up I could use right about now. With hand outstretched in a claw, I freeze the confused woman in place magically and she just looks at me, still apparently also in processy-mode.

Something is very wrong. I shouldn’t be this hard. She is resisting, somehow. I hear a grunt and realize it is me.

“Not resisting, silly girl. Drawing your stolen magic out of you through the connection you have made between us.” Catherine says, conversationally, regaining her poise and calmly gesturing, freezing Xander in place behind a barrier of force, against which he pounds to no appreciable effect. Her lips aren’t even moving, she is somehow speaking directly into my mind. “Yes, I am. And if there was anything worth taking in there, I’d suck that out as well, idiot-child.” She walks towards me, and I realize that I am the one who is frozen in place, arm outstretched, as if reaching for help. She’s turned me into a fucking coat-rack. “You have no idea what kind of forces you are tampering with little one. No clue, really. You might as well paint a target on your chest for a true practitioner.”

I hear Giles’ voice now, and I am torn between feeling relieved and embarrassed for him to see me like this. “Let her go. She’s mine.” I fume at his tone. But right now I want her dead a little more, so I prioritize my hate. I can see Giles out of the corner of my eye, hand idly brushing the barrier Catherine has erected between us, pushing, gently at first, then harder, and I can see the barrier move ever so slightly, and Catherine visibly winces. Clearly she has noticed his power. Buffy meanwhile is at his side, punching and kicking the barrier, to no visible avail. Snyder has vanished. Snivelling toady.

Xander is… also gone? Catherine has her hand at my throat, and I can feel the power within her, because it is mine. Okay, technically, I stole it from her fair and square, but let’s not quibble. She is somehow pulling magic out of me, every second I grow weaker. I could cry to feel the fire leaking out of me into her hand. My throat burns with the transfer of energy. I expect I’ll combust at the end.

Suddenly, I hear Amy’s cry of pain and protest as she flies into the wall with a crunch. Xander comes stalking in from the library and towers over her, yanking up by her hair. He lifts her to somewhere between her knees and her feet, and jerks her around, keeping her off-balance, suspended by nothing but her hair and her hands, now reaching up to claw at his sleeve, trying to get a grip. Catherine’s hand drops from my throat, but I still can’t move, no matter how hard I try to spin and rip her throat out. “Let her go, or watch your little girl die.”

“Mommy?” Amy says, dazed by the sudden impact, confused by her mothers’ sudden appearance. I can see the reaction on Catherine’s face, shock and outrage at first, then cold determination. In an instant I realize that she will never surrender, not for a daughter that she was willing to kill by her own hand.

Xanders’ arm moves suddenly and I hear a crack. Even Giles looks surprised to see that Xander has pulled Amy up so hard that her neck has broken instantly. She hangs grotesquely, flopping on her broken neck, and he releases her hair and lets her drop bonelessly to the floor. I think for an instant that Xander somehow knew that Catherine wouldn’t surrender, but he isn’t even looking at Catherine, he is looking straight into my eyes and his are cold, accusing. He didn’t even care if Catherine was going to surrender. That message was for me…

I realize that I can move as I gasp in shock and fall to my knees.

Giles moves at that moment, and his hand plunges into the barrier, like a claw searching for a toy prize, squirming inside the barrier and ripping it aside. Buffy and Xander are at his sides, both battering at it, her with a cold determination, him with an incoherent cry of rage, face twisted and unrecognizable to me. I am too stunned to move, as is Catherine, apparently. She turns to me, perhaps in an attempt to paralyze me anew, but I swat her aside, snapping us both out of our respective moments. I hear the barrier tear apart with a ripping sound and Xander literally falls over me, having been pressed against it at the time. Buffy also hops forward, unbalanced by the sudden lack of resistance, and Giles just strides forwards, slowly, confidently, implacably, like a predator. Like a Master.

Damn him.

Catherine cries out something I don’t recognize, desperation in her eyes, and the corridor fills with a hot choking smoke that washes over me like from a blast-furnace. I feel for her with the magic, send out tendrils to entangle her before she gets away, and I can feel Buffy and Xander moving around me, attempting to find her, to get a hand on her so that they can end this. Giles stands close enough for me to touch. I realize that Catherine is no longer present, that she has somehow become the mist. Giles shouts, “She is the smoke! Willow, burn her.” Thanks Rupert. I got that. The smoke clears down the corridor like a freight-train, boiling away, to safety and I can’t make it burn. I can’t get a grip. I can feel Giles next to me, radiating disapproval, radiating frustration. Sucks being impotent, doesn’t it Giles? I conjure a sphere of flame in my hand and send it rocketing after the mist. I see it burn a hole in the fog and an unearthly wail follows, but the fog is gone, out the door and rising into the night sky. He practically drags me by the arm and I am outside so fast that I would fall to my knees from dizziness if he weren’t still clutching my arm in a grip so tight as to leave bruises. The fog has dissipated into the night. I can see shreds of it traveling in all directions. I see Snyder running, out-of-breath, from the back exit to the library, having apparently run around to cut her off. Huh.

“Did you get her?” Buffy asks? “No,” Giles and I say almost simultaneously. He is still holding my arm like he is going to rip it off, and I know that I am not strong enough to do anything other than piss him off, so I allow it. Xander is looking around, sniffing, but I think it is an excuse to stay away from us. Giles finally relinquishes my arm, pushing it away and I fall again with the violence of it. By the time I can even look up, Buffy is back on his other arm, gloating, and he seems to consider a comment, looking down at me, and then thinks better of it and just turns away.

I sit there for second, wondering if anything else can go wrong tonight. Xander walks over and watches coldly as I pull myself to my feet. Apparently, that would be a ‘yes.’