The next five weeks, Willow was convinced, were some of the worst of her life. Which, given some of the months she’d had, she felt was really saying something.
Buffy didn’t seem to be getting any happier. Xander was snippy and obnoxious. And Giles was growing increasingly crabby and short-tempered.
Not that she blamed him. Ok, not that she felt like she *should* blame him. He was in pain and hormonal and Ben hadn’t shown up for his last appointment and... when Buffy hurt, he hurt. Especially when it was like this and there was nothing he could do.
But still, if she were honest with herself, she was getting tired of it. All of it.
Spike and Anya were just about the only people she could stand to be around at the moment, and how weird was that?
She mused on that as she sat at the table in the Magic Box with her homework and watched Giles and Xander bicker over something. She didn’t know what they were talking about. She didn’t want to know. She wished she were somewhere else.
She sighed, and suddenly Anya plopped down in a chair beside her.
“Obnoxious, isn’t it?” Anya said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Willow said, finding no energy to form real words.
“I mean, Giles is always on Xander’s case these days. Whatever did Xander do to him? It’s just wrong!”
Willow blinked at the injustice of this, and turned a tired glare on Anya. Who was oblivious.
“You know, this wouldn’t even be a problem if you’d just stuck with women.”
Willow shook her head in complete defeat and buried her face in her hands. So much for Anya. Guess she was left with Spike.
Giles and Xander’s shouts rang through the enclosed space, and she was really about ready to just slap her hands over her ears and start singing. But before she could, the shouts ended abruptly with a sharp crack.
And then a clatter.
Her eyes snapped open, and Giles was on the floor, and Xander’s fist was still clenched.
*Oh, goddess,* was her first thought, and then she was out of her chair, heading for Giles.
But he was on his feet before she got halfway there, and then Willow saw Xander’s eyes go wide, a split-second before Giles hammered him back against a wall.
“You sodding idiot!”
She tried to call his name, but he wasn’t hearing anything. Not hearing Xander’s panicked, cut-off pleas, or Anya’s outrage.
“You have a problem with me, that’s fine,” he was saying, hands buried in Xander’s shirt, pinning him. “But you hit me, and it’s not just me you’re hitting.” Pulled away, just enough to slam Xander back again, hard enough to make the charms rattle. “Hurt my child and you will be very, very sorry. Do you understand?”
And Xander was already nodding, frantically.
Giles just sighed, and then he was stepping away, looking away.
“I need some air,” he said, vaguely directing the comment back at her. Stay away, it meant, and it hurt.
He stalked out the door without another word.
***
He woke to find himself on his feet. Odd position to wake in. His arms hurt.
Somewhere nearby, a voice, female, said, “Wakey, wakey. Argh! These humans. They’re just so fragile! It’s so inconvenient.”
Denial surged through him like nausea, and fell from his lips in a word.
“No.”
He opened his eyes, and it was true, anyway. Glory.
“Yes,” she said, “Yes, yes, yes. And it’s about time, too. You have something that’s mine, and you’ve had it way longer than you deserved to.”
He jolted against the chains holding his arms over his head, but they were solid. His heart hammered.
“No, no, it’s not--”
Glory rolled her eyes and shook her head. Rolled a few steps closer, all sneering eyes and shiny red silk. Touched him. He shuddered at her slim finger on his jaw. Too familiar. Too horrifying. The denial still pulsing in him, begging for this to be a nightmare, begging her to just leave him alone.
“Oh, silly, silly human. You really think you can convince me this isn’t my shiny key? I mean, it’s not even like you hid it all that well. I know it is. Innocent. Human. Can’t get much more innocent than never born, can you?”
Her finger trailed down his throat. Turned and pressed, and he felt her nail slice through skin, felt warm blood and brighter, hotter pain.
“He’s not--”
“Don’t much care, hon. Now, be a sweetie and hold still for me, will ya? He’s not much use to me all wrapped up in your innards.”
His shirt ripped, easy as tissue paper. Her finger again, sliding down, drawing a line of chilled horror from his sternum to his navel. And it isn’t until her nail slips into his skin like a scalpel that his reeling mind stumbled over the only answer.
“He’ll die,” he gasped.
She stopped, and relief made him weak and cold.
“What?”
“He can’t--” he’s gasping for air, for reason, for calm, “can’t live outside of me. Not yet. Too... too young.”
It’s a lie, he thinks, but he needs it to be true, to convince her, so much that there isn’t a trace of deceit in his voice.
“Oh,” she said, “Oh... OH!” With rising frustration. And then, with an air of forcibly regained poise, “Fine. Fine. We can work with that. We’ll just have to... keep you around a bit longer.”
But he doesn’t have time to be relieved. Because then her hands flash up to his temples, and for a moment, there’s a horrid sensation of something squirming in his brain, and then...
Darkness.
***
It wasn’t until Willow got home and Giles wasn’t there that she began to panic.
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