Time stopped when she saw him.
Literally.
Buffy dangled in the middle of a kick, the scabby minion at whom she aimed frozen with an expression of horror and resignation. Xander grimaced as he gripped his axe, grappling with another minion, both of them still as statues. Spike’s mouth was wide in a roar, fangs bared.
Glory’s eyes were stopped, mid-roll.
And he hung in the middle of it, arms over his head, suspended by a chain from the ceiling. He looked around, vaguely. His eyes empty and confused. Far too untouched by the chaos. Dried blood on his jaw, and down his stomach, but otherwise unhurt.
She dropped to her knees.
“Oh, god, baby. Oh, god. No.”
She lost sight of him, in a blur of tears, but heard him say, softly, almost mournfully, “Too dark. Not time yet.”
Senseless. She gasped a sob and staggered to her feet. Stumbled to him, and was horrified when he flinched at her touch.
“Can’t!” he said, sharply, with the tone of voice he used to train Buffy. “Not yours... not... mine--I... there’s... it’s strange,” he said, his voice growing softer as he grew more confused.
She reached up along his arms, touched the chains and they turned to vines and fell away under her hands. He fell too, and almost sent them both to the floor, trying to put too much of his weight in her hands. She stumbled, trying to hold him, trying to coax him towards the door.
He resisted. He looked back to Glory.
“I need to be here,” he said, words that sounded almost lucid, but no less insane.
“No, no, baby. Come on, please. Please!”
But he shoved her away, hard enough that she hit the floor. His look of disdain melted her.
“Here,” he said.
Her control shattered, and the room burst back to life around them. Shouts and crashes and clanging weapons. Buffy’s kick landed, and the minion staggered back, tripped over Willow and went down.
Glory took two steps towards Giles, and Willow screamed out, throwing all her life into one word, “Thicken!” And Glory was stopped. For a moment.
It was enough. Spike got hold of Giles’ arm, and Buffy kicked another minion out of the way, and they fled.
***
This was what failure felt like, Buffy decided, hours later, as she sat in an abandoned gas station in the middle of nowhere, beset by an army and tracked by a Hellgod, with an insane Watcher, and a half-dead Xander.
She watched Ben take Xander’s pulse, feeling the whole thing just get a little unreal.
Willow sat down beside her. Her eyes nervously tracked Giles as he prowled along the perimeter, peering out between the boards over the window.
“He wouldn’t have liked it. The magic I did,” she said. “He doesn’t want me...”
“You had to, Will,” Buffy said, gently. Aching.
“Yeah. I still... have to. But all I could find to fix him was this thing... have to be right next to her. And...”
Buffy reached for her hand and gripped it as a tear slid down Willow’s cheek. Giving comfort was, at the very least, something to do. Even if there was so little comfort to give. So little hope.
“I’m so sorry, Willow. So--” Her voice broke. “God.”
Willow looked down at their hands in her lap and sniffed.
Then she raised her free hand and gently tugged on a chain around her neck, pulled it up out of her blouse. A ring of gold bounced down to hang over her chest. Glimmered in the dull light. Willow’s fingers dropped down to caress it.
“He... we... god, Buffy I have to get him back.”
Buffy’s breath was caught in her throat.
“Oh. Oh, god. Willow, you--”
Willow pushed on, through tears. “We didn’t want to tell anyone yet. Not while things were so--but we.”
Then she was reaching in her pocket, fumbling something out. Her driver’s license.
“See? It... every time I see it, I--- it makes me smile.”
Buffy took the card with numb fingers and stared at the name. Willow Giles. They were... And then they were both startled to their feet as Giles attacked one of the boarded windows, shouting his latest mantra about needing to be somewhere.
Willow ran to him, but he only knocked her away. Spike dragged him back and tussled with him, until Giles gave up and settled down, glaring at Spike.
And then, *Ben* freaked out, for no apparent reason.
And then Glory was there, out of nowhere.
Giles was shouting, pointing at Dawn.
Glory was laughing.
Grabbing her sister.
Gone.
***
He blinked, and found himself in the middle of a battlefield.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of Buffy running towards a tower that stood like a skeleton against the sky.
Willow’s hand gripped his arm and she leaned over him. Her ring dangled down and traced over his sleeve, and it was all so real, so sane, so quiet, even in the chaos.
“Willow, you--”
“Couldn’t let you stay gone.”
He gripped her hand and looked into her eyes, so glad to be able to truly see them again.
“What the hell is going on?”
***
After she told him, he went to the tower, and found Ben lying in his own blood, coughing weakly.
“Hey, Rupert,” he said, smiling slightly.
He knelt beside him, this good man, who’d helped him when he’d been nearly hopeless. He felt cold inside. Glory is Ben. Ben is Glory.
“Can you move?”
“Need a-- a minute,” Ben said. “She could have killed me.”
The cold spread a little further through his chest, hurting.
“No, she couldn’t,” he said, softly.
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