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Title: BRAVE EYES
Author: psimetis
E-mail: psimetis@hotmail.com
Spoilers: Season 3, then AU
Rating: NC-17
Sober Warnings: Dark Buffy. Kidnapping. Torture. Rape.
Sex Warnings: Angel tongue.
2/?

* * *

‘BLACK’


There were things Willow will always remember, she realized, even if they were things she would rather not. One such eternal, personal memory would be the grudgingly familiar scent of dusty, musty, old books. She can never forget that, no matter how hard she tried.

She opened her eyes to the familiar sight of Sunnydale High’s school library.

Her wrists were handcuffed to one of the steel links of the book cage. And she was naked.

The Slayer leaned on a bookcase just within sight of the cage, staring through its casually opened door.

“Does this mean snuggles?” the vampire slurred slightly to the small, sinewy blonde before her. She wondered if she still looked sexy even while sprawled rather awkwardly.

The small, emotionless curve to the Slayer’s mouth was a little disturbing. This was the first Slayer Willow had seen, and yet she was certain that Slayers did not usually come in such a compact package that literally screamed one hundred percent, ‘cold blooded killer’.

‘Cold blooded’ was usually Willow’s department, and she wondered if the lack of light in the Slayer’s eyes was what her witch saw in her own green depths.

It was kinda unattractive.

“So,” the Slayer suddenly spoke. The casualness of her tone--almost flippant--was very much in contrast with the dangerous way she approached. “You were talking to Drusilla.”

“Yes,” Willow said, with equal casualness. “She’s short a few crackers.”

“Where’s Spike?” the Slayer then asked, her steel toed boots stopping short of Willow’s bare feet. The blonde girl reached back casually behind her and shut the cage.

“Spike?” Willow answered. “I wouldn’t know. We never met.”

“Wrong answer,” the Slayer merely said. She undid the leather belt that held up her olive drab, army pants. She wrapped it around her small fist, the heavy buckle facing out.

“Well, if you’ll give me the right answer, I’ll repeat it back t--”

Willow’s mouth was suddenly filled with blood.

* * *

Giles entered his library, a little weary from substitute teaching the English Literature class. It being the Hellmouth, there was always a lack of teachers. He saw his Slayer near his office, wiping her hands off with a stained rag.

“Hey,” she said.

“How goes the interrogation?” he asked. Buffy had bagged a vampire last night, one that apparently had been accompanying Drusilla. Spike’s mate had escaped, but acquiring one of his minion lieutenants was definitely favorable to the White Hats.

“Uncooperative, as usual,” Buffy replied, dropping the bloodied rag behind a counter. “We’ll get what we want. Eventually.”

“Of course,” Giles acknowledged. His new Slayer was a rather cold girl, but she was remarkably tenacious when set upon something. “I’ll do more research into this mysterious ritual Spike intends to do.”

He moved for his office, not bothering to give the book cage a glance.

* * *

“Tara,” Jenny said into the phone, in the most patient voice she could. She had just had a microwaved dinner in her apartment, and was now settling down with the crap load of computer disks she had to grade. “She’s a vampire. They do things like this. It’s quite possible she just left.” Jenny listened to the other witch for a while, frowning. “Well...if you think so. Just give it another night. She could be out ‘playing’, you know. She’s a fledge, that’s what they do.”

Tara finally hung up the phone with her coven head, utterly frustrated and worried.

She had a terrible feeling about this. Willow always came home to her, even when it was night. When she had tried a location spell to find Willow, it had backfired. The only thing assuring her that Willow was still undead and not dusted by the Slayer or by something else was the bespelled talisman Tara had hastily assembled, consisting of strands of Willow’s hair, wax, and a crystal. As long as the crystal pulsed red, she knew Willow was still in this plane of existence.

The witch then realized that she had no idea how to go about finding the vampire by conventional means.

She called Amy, hoping her friend had ideas.

* * *

Willow woke from the stinging slap to her face. When she opened her eyes, the library was dark, and the Slayer’s sinewy, slim form loomed above her, smelling of sweat, dust, and ashes.

“Had a good hunt tonight, but no Spike,” the Slayer commented, as she stared down. “Mind telling me where he is?”

“Tijuana?” Willow suggested helpfully.

The Slayer suddenly hauled the vampire up roughly by her hair, and when Willow was dropped unceremoniously on her naked butt, she found herself sprawled on a spread white sheet.

“Don’t want to have to clean up the blood after,” the Slayer informed almost cheerfully, as the long, thin sjambok in her hand came whipping down, cutting a ribbon into Willow’s thighs.

In the light of day, some of the old books shelved outside the book cage revealed the fresh splatter of blood along their spines.

* * *

When Giles entered his library the next afternoon, he was very glad it was a Friday.

“How’s our guest?” he asked his Slayer, going to his office to lay his overstuffed briefcase on his desk. Buffy was drinking from a bottle of water. She never attended classes, it seemed, and Giles never cared enough to push.

“Stubborn,” Buffy replied. Apparently she had been working out, her sleeveless tee stained dark between her breasts. She had a towel around her shoulders.

Giles glanced briefly at the book cage, with the sheets hung haphazard around it in case any unsuspecting student should happen to look that way. But noone ever came into the library. Whoever their guest was, was curiously very silent.

“You should stake it then, and find another way to acquire inf--”

“No,” his Slayer interrupted. “This one’s not a minion. It’s definitely an important vampire. Spike might even bargain for it.”

“Unless it’s Drusilla or Angel, I highly doubt it,” Giles said dubiously. He moved slightly for the cage. Vampires tended to be rather vocal and obnoxious captives when held, as had been in his own experience. He wondered why this one was so quiet.

“Weren’t you and that computer teacher going out tonight?” his Slayer suddenly asked. Giles stopped, blushing.

“W-Well, yes, I,” Giles hurriedly entered his office, wrestling with his overstuffed, leather brief for a bit to cover up his flustered demeanor. “I-I shall see you tomorrow then. Good hunting, Buffy.”

“You too, Giles,” Buffy smiled, as she watched her Watcher hurriedly exit through the library’s double doors. She polished off the last of her water, and spared the covered book cage a measured glance.

She had heard the vampire gagging noisily earlier, probably from trying to vomit up the holy water she’d forced down its throat.

* * *

“Thank you for coming with me,” Tara said sincerely, as Amy walked beside her.

“No problem, I just wish I could have thought of more places to hit,” the dark haired witch assured. “Or people to hit,” she added brightly, anticipating Tara’s patented look of disapproval. It was amazing that a goodie goodie like Tara was hooked up with an evil vampire like Willow. It was obvious the vamp decided to skip town, but she’ll see her friend through the whole ‘got left, boo hoo,’ bit, and then it’ll be ice cream comfort time.

“A-And did you talk to the Slayer?” she heard Tara ask.

“God, yes, and you owe me,” Amy complained. “Did I tell you already, that girl is such the stuck up bitch? Like I haven’t been fighting the forces of dark longer than her! Anyway, she says she hasn’t seen, nor dusted, a vampire that fits Willow’s description. I made her promise to let us know if she does. See Willow, I mean, not dust her.” Her blonde companion sighed in relief.

“Good,” Tara said, glad to put one worry away, and helpfully opened the bar door of Willie’s for Amy to proceed her.

* * *

The kick to her ribs by steel toed leather was quite a wake up call.

It was dark again, and Willow was very hungry.

She literally smelled a rat.

The dark form of the Slayer towered above her, holding a dead rat aloft.

“Good,” the Slayer said, as she easily tied the dead rodent by the tail to a link of the cage far above Willow’s head. “Now you know where food is.”

The heel of the boot came down hard on Willow’s neck, pinning the vampire to the library’s cold floor.

“Now,” the Slayer casually gave. “Tell me where Spike is.”

“You know where Spike is,” Willow rasped, meeting the Slayer’s cold eyes. She had easily come to that realization quite a while ago. She was forced to play the stupid game the Slayer’s way, though. This time, Willow saw a full smile curve the Slayer’s lips, and it was like death smiling.

Good answer,” the blonde girl admitted. The pressure of her boot increased on Willow’s neck. “You know,” she added, as she cocked her head to study the vampire’s face. “Not liking your eyes much. The way they’re always drifting somewhere. Studying. Plotting.”

“Reading,” Willow swallowed, her throat still raw from the holy water diet. “Book titles. Did you...know, there’s a... Slayer’s Handbook, on the shelf...over there? Must be where--you got your lame, torture techniques...from. E’cept,” Willow swallowed again, her voice grown too painfully hoarse. “I, don’t think, you’ve read it. You look kinda...illiterate.”

The Slayer’s smile got bigger.

“Like to read, huh,” she stated.

The Slayer stared down at Willow for a long while, so many secret thoughts hidden behind her emotionless gaze.

“I really don’t like your eyes,” she finally whispered, and bent down to pry one of Willow’s green orbs wide open.

When the holy water hit her retina, it really, really hurt.

* * *

The demon bar, the bleeder’s bar, the newly re-opened Bronze, even the demon poker...nothing, no one had seen Willow. Tara barely slept last night, tossing and turning as she tried to think of more possibilities. She actually did not know Willow that well, she realized. She knew that before she met her, the vampire had lost practically everyone and everything of her unlife. It was understandable that when she entered Tara’s life, there didn’t appear to be anything else or even anyone else that the vampire was interested in.

Tara clutched the ruby lit crystal that now hung from a cord around her neck. Willow was alive, she knew it. And despite Amy’s doubts and those of her fellow, sympathetic coven members, Tara knew Willow would not willingly leave town right then. The vampire had something to look forward to, when she wanted to meet Jenny.

“Okay, don’t get me wrong,” Amy had ventured carefully to the blonde witch last night, when yet another inquiry about Willow had not panned out. “But...why do you care?”

Because I got to know her, because she’s more than a great lay, because she somehow pushed herself to become more than just a vampire and that is something we all should see, Tara had wanted to say. And she tried to, until Amy rolled her eyes and merely said:

“You just got it bad.”

* * *

Giles sat in his lit office, the dark library devoid of sound, and re-read the copy of the ritual Spike supposedly wanted to perform on his mate and Angel. If what he was reading was the correct ritual, then there was no danger of Spike being able to heal his lover with Angel’s sire blood. Buffy assured him that the souled vampire was safely hiding somewhere, and therefore, out of trouble.

Giles left his desk to retrieve another book for cross reference, just in case.

It was while he was searching among the darkened stacks that he heard it.

Giles was not a big magic user, not anymore, but he did erect the wards around the library himself, that protected it from spells and scrying. He also erected the sound dampening wards that shielded the book cage, meant to silence Oz’s howls from outsiders when he was in wolf form.

The only by product of the sound dampening spell Giles had used, was that as the caster, he could still hear anything behind the shield of the ward.

What he heard now, was the distinct, very soft sound of a girl quietly weeping.

He had thought Buffy would have dusted her prisoner by now. Disturbed by the sad sounds, Giles approached the cage’s door. As he neared, the crying stopped. He flicked on a nearby desk lamp in order to see better.

“Dear lord,” he whispered, staring through the links of the book cage’s door. The tangled, red hair was immediately recognizable. The young vampire was naked, and entirely curled up in a corner of the cage, her wrists black with dried blood from where they dangled from their steel cuffs.

All her fingers were broken.

And as Giles stared hard, he realized familiar green eyes would not be staring back because the lids were burned shut.

* * *

Buffy jauntily entered the library doors, dirtied ax casually swinging. She saw that her Watcher’s office was lit up.

“Buffy,” her Watcher addressed her, from the far corner of the library near the book cage. He stood tall and still in the dark, the dim moonlight from the skylight glinting dully off his glasses.

Well duh, Buffy thought. Finally the old guy catches up.

* * *

“For the last time, have you seen my vampire,” Tara grated out, as she stared into Rack’s impudent, sly eyes.

“Must be that time of month for you,” the dark magic dealer finally drawled. He held up his hands in mock defeat. “No,” he finally pronounced into Tara’s face.

Amy watched Tara’s back as the white magic witch literally brought Rack’s place down.

“Jenny will be happy you did that,” she commented as she and Tara finally walked away from the mystical remnants of the dark warlock’s destroyed establishment. They were checking out the other magic users now, only because Jenny surmised that wards were what were making location spells fail. “But wasn’t that kinda overkill?”

“He was wasting my time,” Tara replied curtly, her blue eyes suddenly stinging with tears as she clutched the crystal around her neck.

* * *

“Don’t tell me you haven’t broken a few fingers yourself in your day, ‘Ripper’,” the Slayer tossed up to Giles. The Watcher’s body grew tenser.

“Dust her, and be done with it,” he ground out. “Do not prolong this charade--”

“Or what,” his Slayer challenged. “Because I’ll really be ticked off if I find you’ve staked it while I was out, Giles. I’m not done with her.” The Slayer almost grinned as she stared up with her hard, emotionless eyes. “And if you do decide to put her out of her ‘misery’, I’ll just find another.”

After a long, hard look, the Slayer suddenly stepped back, a smile on her lips and her body language careless. It was a gross caricature of a carefree teen, to Giles’ eyes.

“And you know my keeping it alive still helps out the White Hats’ cause,” she remarked. Giles could only mentally ask himself: what White Hats? Oz, Larry, and Anne had been driven away weeks ago. There was only he and his very dangerous Slayer now.

“I know she’s valuable. She can still be leverage against Spike,” he heard Buffy say.

“Spike only wants Angel,” Giles spat out. “I don’t see what use Willow is to him.” Buffy’s eyes suddenly gleamed in the dim light of the library.

“‘Wil-low’, huh?” she repeated. “So that’s its name? Cute.” She turned her attention to the cage, obviously dismissing her Watcher.

“Don’t wait up for me,” she tossed over her shoulder.

Giles stood, hands clenching, and did not know what to do.

He really had no idea what to do.

* * *

‘VOID’


Willow remembered the torment and misery she gifted Puppy with, and how she reveled in his pain and sorrow. She remembered how sweet his broken sounds were. She remembered spinning in Xander’s arms beneath Darla’s hanging cage, catching the trickle of potent, centuries old blood that dribbled from the weakened vampire’s body right on her tongue, face, and eyelids, and had laughed. She remembered the fear that rolled off her witch in waves, waiting for the blows that finally never came. She wondered how they survived her. She wondered why, in comparison, she seemed to be doing embarrassingly worse now in the hands of the Slayer.

She got me with the eyes, Willow tried to rationalize. I sorta fell apart when she took my eyes.

And she especially didn’t do well when the game was finally discarded.

“This isn’t about Spike,” Willow had finally answered when the Slayer asked her stupid question again, for the countless time.

“Never was,” came the cheery, frightening agreement. The Slayer broke her last finger.

Then, after the blinding of her eyes, there were no more fake questions. Just the burning.

“This one’s for my Dad,” the Slayer would say, pressing a large, heavy, metal cross right over Willow’s undead heart. She tried not to thrash around too much as she was seared. Not that her wrists cared anymore, anyway.

“This, for my Mom,” the Slayer would say, pressing the cross hard where Willow’s womb would be.

“This, for my girlfriend,” the Slayer would whisper, burning the cross right into Willow’s crotch.

“And this,” the Slayer would harsh out, her voice low and savage. “This is for me.”

And Willow would scream as the cross was shoved up her cunt.

She screamed every time.

* * *

Amy knew, that one of these nights while she was helping Tara through her whole ‘denial’ thing, that the Hellmouth odds would rise up and bite them both on the ass. This was that special night.

The vampires that surrounded them were like...way too many.

“You da witchy-poo’s lookin’ for some redhead vamp?” one of the ‘way too many’ sneered as he swaggered closer.

“We’re those ‘witchy-poo’s’,” Amy heard Tara at her back answer brightly. “And we can set you on fire and stuff, so, um, not any closer, please?”

Amy really tried not to roll her eyes.

The ‘way too many’ vamps didn’t move in any closer, however.

“Spike’ll see you,” the swaggery vamp finally said.

“Okay, let’s go,” Tara agreed.

“Tomorrow. At da abandoned factory. Dusk,” the vamp merely answered.

“No. Now. Tonight,” Tara ejected, no longer sounding either nice or goodie-like. Amy felt Tara’s back leaving her own back and knew her friend had stepped away. The dark haired witch quickly spun around and took the blonde’s arm.

“Tomorrow’s fine!” she sang out, and literally dragged Tara away from the vamp group that reluctantly parted for them.

* * *

Giles nursed his glass of scotch. After that night of confrontation with his Slayer, he had tried to stay with the vampire, hoping his presence would protect it. He had debated taking it to his home, but he knew Buffy would still be able to harm it, even there. And he could not watch it every minute. There were the classes he had to teach. He was certain that Buffy tormented the vampire then. Its eyes were burned shut, still. And she was always curled up. Giles had no idea what state her body was really in, even when he had gone into the cage to pick up the drained, dead rats and leave the cups of pig’s blood behind.

It was very late, and dark, so he thought it was his imagination at first, when he recognized the sounds of very soft whispering.

This time, when he quietly approached the cage with his bottle and glass, the vampire did not stop.

“...you have one hundred, seventy-five lights in your room......They come in sets of thirty-five. Three lights were burned out, but I helped replace them. Three sets on your ceiling...make constellations. You never bothered with their real names, you said.....You called them, your own stuff. ‘Moose, in bathtub’, ‘pile o’ crackers’......”

Giles closed his eyes as he listened to the soft voice that sounded so familiarly like a very young, innocent girl’s, from so long ago.

“...you have twenty-six books in your...bookcase. That’s the.....number, of the, alphabet. I said. You have five new pencils, a knife...three pens, in your pencil box. Four rings, in your jewelry, box....Six different, bangles. Seven necklaces. I untangled two of them...”

“You have four pillows, and four blankets. You say you can’t have enough, pillows. I like your breasts, I said...that makes six...”

“Everything about you is, pretty. I like your, voice. I heard you sing, doing...the laundry. I was hoping you would read to me. I was going to ask....I never...got to finish the book....about the Sidhe.....You were going to explain it to me.”

“I like your eyes. I like them best, your...eyes. I never saw such, brave eyes. That’s why...I didn’t kill you. I’m going to...remember them. I will remember them...to the very last.”

“Yours...Brave eyes,” the vampire whispered.

She finally quieted, and Giles was uncertain whether it was because of his presence. Then the library doors swung open. His Slayer merely looked at him. Not even with disdain.

“I guess you got a reason to get drunk,” she simply commented, in a voice that really didn’t care at all.

* * *

Amy was certain that being Miss Supporto-gal did not also mean supporting your friend’s decision to meet a master vampire who was once a member of the Scourge. Correction, a master vampire with a looney tunes girlfriend who was also in the Scourge. In an abandoned factory, in the bad side of town. Amy had been nothing but, ‘really bad idea, Tara!’ to her friend until the appointed time of dusk.

Of course, the master vampire turned out to be super sexy, in a kind of evil, bad boy--and oboy, stopping those thoughts now.

“So, luvs. What can the Big Bad do for you?” Spike said to her. To her and Tara. Amy wondered if he was using the thrall on her witchy self with the way he was lounging like a punk, sex god in his chair.

No come on, really.

“The little Tree lies broken,” Drusilla sang softly from her tea table.

“Where,” came Tara’s question, raw from her throat.

“Like Grandmum was, and Daddy was, and now me,” Dru continued as she poured imaginary tea very carefully into a chipped cup. “My White Knight shall be next,” she added in a faraway whisper, and Spike shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Tara went to kneel at the mad vampiress’ feet.

“Please tell me,” she pleaded softly, looking into the dreaming eyes.

* * *

The school had long been closed for the day, but Jenny was not surprised to find the Watcher in the teacher’s lounge.

“Rupert, you really don’t look good,” Jenny teased lightly, as she watched the librarian pour out a very rare cup of coffee. The man usually preferred tea. “Is substituting so bad? If you don’t shave soon, Snyder will have your ass.”

“And he can bugger my ass, all he wants,” Giles muttered to himself. He had to get back to the library, but perhaps he could take just a few more minutes break. He had left the vampire talking very softly to herself.

“Is it the Spike situation? I’m sorry that we haven’t been paying attention. The coven is kind of wrapped up in trying to find a vampire one of my witches had lost.”

“W...What?” Giles asked softly.

“Tara Maclay,” Jenny gave, as she put sugar in her cup, smiling. “Actually tamed the vampire Willow. Can you believe it? Then one night Willow didn’t return home. At first we all thought she ran off, because you know how vampires are. But Tara tried a location spell that kept bouncing back to her. That means wards. We’ve been trying ever since to--”

“Jenny,” Giles swallowed. The head witch looked at the Watcher, startled by his paleness as he gripped her arm. “You must come with me.”

* * *

Buffy’s fingers twined in the steel links of the cage, as she stared down at the curled up demon. She gave the cage a loud shake, forcing the vampire’s head to snap back a little, before it fell forward into the shelter of its hung arms.

“You do know when it ends,” Buffy informed softly. She tilted her head, realizing that the vampire was finally boring her with the way it just laid there. “It ends when you beg me to.”

“Not......without..dinner. And...flowers,” she heard murmured from the vampire’s arms. Buffy smiled. Maybe she wasn’t so bored with this one yet, after all.

Idly, the Slayer discerned the approach of two people who finally burst through the library doors.

“Get Away From Her!!” she heard snarled at her back.

Wow, Buffy thought to herself. Dig the passion. As she looked down, she was surprised to see how tense the vampire was.

And the tears that suddenly squeezed out of its fucked up eyes.

Buffy turned without a care, and saw Amy, the witch, and some other, really pissed witch.

“And you’ll do what,” she taunted. She took an easy stance before the witches. “I mean, I’d heard, but I had to see for myself. ‘Domesticating the Demon’,” she pronounced, like it was a really bad cable t.v. program. She smiled. “You guys are really fucked up, you know that?”

“I...kinda think, that’s ‘kettle’ calling us ‘black’?” Amy quipped weakly, shaken by what little she could see of Willow in the cage. Tara made a gesture. The Slayer was suddenly shoved magically out of the way. Tara whispered as she approached the book cage and its door flew open. Amy followed her friend and tried to watch her back, the dark haired witch warily facing the Slayer. Buffy laughed.

Tara’s head spun when she entered the cage and saw all of Willow. She felt bile rise. She threw a hand out to grip the links desperately.

“Oh god, Tara, not now!” Amy squeaked desperately behind her, as she held her friend up. “Please, Willow needs you!”

It was all Tara needed to hear. Swallowing her nausea, she managed to voice the spell that unlocked the handcuffs. Willow’s wrists didn’t fall out of them, they just...stuck there.

“Sweetie...darling...” Tara tried to soothe as she knelt by the vampire, but her voice was shaking, as she helped the hurt hands down. Willow was making little snuffling noises, her tears evident.

“D-Don’t s-s-see m-me like this,” she was pleading. “D-D-Don’t l-l-look....”

The Slayer snorted loudly from where she stood, and laughed again.

“A-Amy,” Tara stammered, jerking out of her coat. She wrapped her vampire as best as she could. Tears kept squeezing out from Willow’s damaged, shut eyes and Tara just wanted to--

“Amy, I need help, her hands are b-broken, and, and her legs--” Muscle damage. From whipping. “She’s...Amy--”

Amy was staring with blank horror through the links of the cage at the smiling Slayer.

“Amy!!” the dark haired witch heard snapped at her from the floor. She looked blankly down at Tara, with Willow in her arms, and then up, when she heard the library doors fly open. Jenny, her mentor, came in hurriedly, with the Watcher.

“Jen--Jenny’s here, oh god, Jenny!!” Amy cried, rushing to the cage’s door, only to stop and gesture frantically to her teacher from the safety of the cage’s entrance. She suddenly burst into tears.

Great, Tara thought as she held Willow close. Amy tells me not to lose it, then she does.

Jenny slowly approached the cage, not having to see much to understand fully what had been going on. She turned with wide eyes to stare at the Slayer, and then wordlessly raised one of her hands, making the ancient gypsy gesture for the ‘Evil Eye’.

“Pfft!! Oh, puh-leeze!” Buffy snorted.

“Tara,” Jenny said, as she turned back to the cage again. “We’ll levitate her out. Amy! Get it together!”

Amy abruptly stopped crying. “Okay,” she blurted, with a hiccup.

“Let me--” Giles offered.

“No,” Jenny said tersely. She could not look at him.

“Jenny, let Mr. Giles help carry Willow,” Tara pleaded from within the cage. Her blue eyes darted to where Buffy stood, then back to the head witch. Jenny understood.

If they were too busy levitating Willow, no one was left to watch their back.

Jenny nodded and Giles hurried into the cage to pick up Willow from Tara’s arms. The vampire looked so small.

As Giles carried Willow out and past the cage, the witches following, Tara suddenly flung herself at Buffy, fists flying.

Amy couldn’t believe it, but she actually caught her friend by the waist in time. Barely.

“Tara, no!!” she cried as the blonde witch’s momentum nearly had them both collide with the Slayer--or more exactly, the floor, as Buffy easily stepped back. “If you get yourself knocked out, you can’t help Willow!”

The rare rage that had possessed her, retreated by only a fraction, as Tara allowed Amy to drag her back to where Jenny and Giles stood. Tara didn’t need more coaxing to turn her back on the smirking Slayer. The group finally headed quickly for the library doors.

“And you’ll come back for me, right?” the Slayer mocked at their backs, but there was hardly the right kind of mirth behind the remark. It was like Buffy was reciting lines.

Tara didn’t bother to look behind her.

“You’ll get yours,” Tara only said solemnly, and it did not sound like a threat, in her quiet, meaningful voice, but more like a last judgment.

* * *


‘Penumbra’


We had ruined her life’s purpose, Tara realized. We mocked it by co-existing, and cohabiting, and being accepting, and not hating.

We screwed with her reason for living.

So she got jealous, or something, and took what was mine.

Tara gazed down at Willow’s sleeping, slim form, all straightened out now, and no longer protectively curled up.

She tried to ruin what is us.

“Tara,” she heard Jenny call softly from her dorm door. She glanced at Amy, who pulled the desk chair over so she could watch Willow, and Tara reluctantly left her bed’s side to join Jenny in the hall.

“The boys set up wards on the entire building,” Jenny whispered to Tara, as she gestured to Andrew, Jonathan, and Michael, standing in the hallway. What Tara appreciated about Jenny was that chromosomes didn’t matter to her. Male and female were welcomed in her coven.

“Thank you,” Tara whispered gratefully to the three young men. They smiled back.

“If the Slayer is within a hundred feet,” Jonathan explained softly. “It should give her a real painful buzz. Not enough to stop her, of course, but then anyone in your room will get a little buzz too. Not a painful one, but, you know. One where you’ll have time to get away or something.” The young man looked slightly sheepish as he explained, but he had on his best gallant demeanor.

“The wards up now are just a temporary measure,” Jenny added quietly. She then pulled something from her coat pocket. A girl’s hairbrush. Giles had handed it to her, before they left the school parking lot. Buffy’s hairs glinted among the bristles. Jenny handed the brush to the boys and Andrew accepted it eagerly.

“I’m having the boys work on a permanent Buffy proofing for the building,” Jenny whispered to Tara. “I want you to feel safe.”

Tara could only tear up gratefully. It was enough of an emotional display to motivate the boys to beat a hasty, embarrassed retreat. Tara then turned to Jenny with the most important, and hardest issue on her mind.

“I think she was raped,” she said softly to the older woman.

They were silent for a while, staring with an understanding that held a woman’s timeless knowledge and sorrow.

Tara was the healer of their coven, and Jenny was the most experienced witch, so the obvious didn’t have to be said aloud between them.

Their healing spells will have little effect on damage inflicted by blessed weapons.

When Tara and Jenny turned their heads, they saw Amy at the door, her posture hunched as she hugged herself. Her eyes were big, and wide, and lost. It was obvious she had heard what Tara had said. For a girl who had fought in apocalypses and against hell things, it seemed almost strange that Amy had yet to learn and accept the base cruelty of simple violation.

What was worse for Amy of course, thought Tara as she and Jenny folded the dark haired girl into their arms, was learning that even those who wore the mantle of ‘good’, could easily do such things.

* * *

Willow woke up, and she hurt alot.

And she couldn’t see.

She smelled her witch’s room, but she couldn’t be sure. It could be a trick.

“Baby,” she heard soothingly above her, and felt a hand at her cheek. It was Tara. It was really her.

Willow sobbed in relief, and tears immediately squeezed out of her messed up eyes. Something was covering them up, the weight cool and smelling of herbs.

“Happy now,” Willow managed to say, trying to explain away the tears as that, and not because of something more wussy, which would be because of all the breaks and burns, and other body stuff. Never that.

“Good,” She heard said softly above her, and it sounded like tears too. She felt a warm, soft kiss on her forehead. “Good. Because I’m happy too. So happy I got you back.”

Willow decided she could cry a little bit more then.

* * *

“How come you came for me?” Tara heard softly asked from the bed the next night, as she prepared a bag of human blood for her vampire.

“You...didn’t expect me to?” Tara asked, with a touch of dismay. Had she failed in letting Willow know that she was truly fond of her?

“I wanted you to. I didn’t expect it.”

Now Tara really felt like crap. She was naturally slow with words, so as she tried to find the right ones, she sat gently on the bed, and eased a straw into Willow’s lips. Willow sucked eagerly. The blood was gone in practically seconds.

“We hadn’t been together that long,” Willow elaborated, as if she hadn’t stopped to suck a cup of blood dry. “I forced my way in here, really. And into your bed. With the, ‘I’m going to break your fingers’, and stuff. You could have been glad to be rid of me.”

“No,” Tara simply said. “I wasn’t.” She gently readjusted the medicated cloth over Willow’s eyes. “I...I lost you, and it felt so wrong. I felt like you belonged here. With me. You’re my responsibility.”

“Like...I’m yours?” Willow asked softly. She had overheard how Tara’s visiting coven friends talked about her; like the vampire was Tara’s in the same way Puppy had been hers.

“Yes,” she heard her witch breathe, and she was no longer by Willow’s side but across the room, putting distance between herself and the vampire in her bed.

“I, I’m going to step out just for a minute, okay?” her witch then said. “Just to take the trash out.” Willow heard the door open, then shut.

The vampire laid quietly for a while.

“I am, you know,” she softly told the silent room.

“Yours,” she whispered.


* * *

Scents, sounds, and touch. Willow was practically greedy for them, adding each new sensation to her little boxes of memories of her witch. Unfortunately, not so much touch right then, because she was wearing bandages over splinted fingers like mittens, but she could touch stuff with her face, and her mouth, and her tongue, and that was so much better.

Willow sighed into the softness of her witch’s pillows, and caressed them with her cheek.

It had only been a few days since her rescue, and Willow could not get up on her own yet, the muscles and tendons of her legs feeling like they had been rearranged and put together the wrong way, so her witch would lay all sorts of small, scented candles near her, or her containers of herbs, or even food stuff, like a mixed box of chocolates, or jelly bellies. And Willow could sort of grab the tray of stuff with her mittened hands and play with what’s there while her witch was in school.

Willow could now identify thirty-seven different kinds of jelly bellies, and fourteen different herbs, and seventeen different chocolates, although she regretted snacking on the herbs, since that depleted her witch’s magic supplies, and they didn’t even get her high.

“What’s this?” Willow asked curiously, when Tara placed something sugary near her nose. It was a strangely familiar smell, but Willow couldn’t quite place it.

“Jolly Roger hard candy,” she heard her witch supply.

Willow stuck her tongue out and licked the plastic wrapped candy in Tara’s hand. And her fingers too, for good measure.

“That one’s red!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, now how about this one.”

Willow only sniffed this time. “Um. Green.”

“And this one?”

“Um. Watermelon.”

“Which would you like?”

“Red,” Willow chose adamantly.

Sucking on the warm flesh of her witch and sucking on blood was always good, but Willow discovered that sucking on hard candies was also good too.

* * *

It was at night when Willow became weak, much to her shame. Blindness did not matter to a vampire--she could sense when it was day, and when it was night. But the Slayer had taken the beloved, violent night from Willow; had probably taken it long before her captivity, when the bitch had slain her Master, and Xander. She knew about the wards, she knew the coven was protecting her, but she still feared to sleep, in case that one came for her during the darkness of hunting time, for her and her witch.

Willow was a vampire and she would rather die than voice her stupid fears, but it always came out, somehow.

“Where are you going?” she would ask, when she could hear her witch slipping on her shoes. The vampire tried not to sound fearful. Or that she cared. She absolutely despised when she sounded needy and codependent.

“Only to the laundry,” her witch would say. Or to the snack machine, or to the showers, or to the library, or to the market, or to the Magic Box. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t, don’t be long,” Willow would say, when she really wanted to say: don’t go alone, take a knife, take Amy, please watch your back, please please please be careful.

It scared her. It scared her so much, because she couldn’t protect her.

* * *

It was a week and a half after Tara had freed Willow from the Slayer that she received a surprise visitor at her dorm room door.

The blonde witch stared up at a tall, rather large, dark haired and sad eyed man, who wore a black overcoat, yet no shirt, and no shoes.

“Puppy!!” she heard Willow exclaim from the bed.

“A-Angel?” Tara queried, realizing why the aura she had read had confused her. He was a vampire with a soul.

“May I come in?” he asked, looking subdued and tired.

Tara hesitated. Angel helped the Slayer, and before that, he had been Willow’s prisoner. The male vampire held out his hands, as if to show he concealed no weapons.

“I’ve heard that this building is protected,” he said. “I...I would like sanctuary. If-If you don’t mind having me....just for a little while?”

Tara invited him in.

“Puppy!” Willow exclaimed happily again. She was lying in Tara’s bed, the area around her burned eyes bearing only scars now, rather than ravaged skin, but she still kept them closed. She held out her bandaged hands.

“How’s my Little One,” Angel said, kneeling carefully by the bed. He took the hands held out to him and gently kissed each one. He moved like someone who was hurt, Tara thought, but it was hard to tell, with the coat on.

“Bad Puppy,” Willow said with a small thrust of her lower lip. “I’m not yours. Xander was my sire. And I heard you were dead. Spike drained you to make Drusilla well.”

“There was no need to drain me for the restoration ritual. And I escaped when the Slayer burned the church. I know my childer escaped as well. I would have felt their deaths. You would have felt mine too, childe.”

Willow frowned slightly, with her closed eyes. “What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m not in your lineage.”

“You are,” Angel gently corrected. “Alexander was Darla’s before he became the Master’s.”

* * *

The story Angel had to tell was astonishing. What surprised Tara even more was the ease with which Willow and Angel bantered with each other. Angel had been tortured by Willow, at least from what Tara understood, yet here he sat, on the floor by the bed, as if their personal history had been otherwise. Perhaps vampires did not take such things very personally from other vampires--torture and humiliation. Or perhaps Angel was just special.

And then Tara remembered how Willow had threatened her, the first time they slept together. Violence was probably just really sadistic foreplay for vampires, she realized. It would explain why Angel seemed so tenderly tolerant towards Willow now, allowing the younger one to pat him on the head.

“Is Puppy’s hair still standing up?” Willow asked in Tara’s direction with a smile. She mussed Angel’s hair. “Before the Master caught him, he used to wear all this hair gel.”

“It’s dirty, don’t touch,” Angel chided, though he hadn’t reprimanded Willow earlier, when she was petting him with her bandaged hand.

“You’re all smoky, and stuff,” Willow commented with a little wrinkle of her nose. “I bet even Tara can smell you.”

It was then that Tara offered Angel the use of her towels and bath kit, just to ease the souled vampire’s embarrassment, and to offer him the comfort of getting cleaned. After his shower, she could see how injured he was. She borrowed a male neighbor’s spare sweats for him, and ran his black, cotton overcoat and his trousers in the wash. When she returned to her room, Willow lay looking thoughtful.

“Puppy’s my uncle,” the vampire said, turning her closed eyes to her. Tara retrieved the special salve she and Amy had made, and placed some carefully around Willow’s eyes.

“That makes him fond of me, I guess,” Willow added, enjoying her witch’s touch. “I thought it was the soul making him soft. Another vampire would have been in here for payback...all with the threats and then fucking me, although that would have been disappointing because my cunt’s messed up. My mouth and my ass is fine, though.”

Tara had to pause for a moment and blink several times. Vampires really expressed...‘affection’ differently.

“You could fuck my ass,” Willow then said brightly. They hadn’t been intimate at all, since she’d come back. She was too injured.

“W-When, when you’re just a little better,” Tara promised. She replaced the salve on the bedside table.

“Xander never acknowledged Darla as anything to him. Maybe the Master messed with his head as well as fed him his own blood,” Willow then said pensively, returning to the subject of her lineage. From what Angel had told them, a master vampire could impose his own will over another’s childer by feeding his own blood to them before they rose. “I always wondered why Xander seemed so doofy. He was probably under Master’s thrall. And I always thought the Master didn’t really like me. If he got mad just because Darla tried to have another boy without his permission, he must’ve been really mad when Xander made me.”

“If that were true, than the Order wouldn’t have been safe for you, after a while,” Tara commented, reassuringly touching Willow’s hair.

“Yes,” her vampire said up to her, closed eyed. “I’m glad after all, that things happened the way they did. I got to find you.”

Tara’s heart swelled to hear such words. Willow could be so sweet.

While she was kissing her, Angel slipped back into the room.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, embarrassed. The wet towel was around his neck, but it didn’t quite hide the reddened burns on his bared chest.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get you a top with the sweatpants,” Tara apologized back. “M-My neighbor hadn’t done his laundry.” Willow giggled beneath her.

“Puppy smells like a girl now,” she said.

“Angel’s also hurt,” Tara added. His body had alot of harsh bruises. She wondered if the Slayer had made them. Tara gestured to the souled vampire. “Let’s look at that.”

“Is he naked?” Willow asked curiously. “Puppy shouldn’t be naked,” she admonished as one would to a child, in Angel’s direction. “It’ll scare Tara. She’s a lesbian.”

Tara blushed as bright as Mars. Angel had the slightest tinge of red gracing his cheeks, and he self-consciously crossed his arms.

* * *

Buffy had kept Angel chained up in Sunnydale High’s school basement, since the death of the Master and his ‘rescue’ that night. She had intended to use Angel as bait to draw out Spike, then ambush the vampire and his mate. She had planned to set up the so-called ‘Slayer of Slayers’, and then finally slay Spike himself.

“But...what about you? You’re souled and, and she endangered you,” Tara asked quietly.

“Buffy had no interest in protecting me,” Angel explained. “I was a demon as well. She said I could take care of myself. If I got myself killed during the ritual, that was my own problem.”

“Did she torture you?” Tara then asked, her voice hard. Angel actually looked a little sheepish at that, and he shifted uncomfortably as Tara finished bandaging his bruised ribs.

“Uh, no, this was from Dru,” he answered self-consciously. “Family issues,” he added simply.

Willow giggled from the bed.

“Thank you for letting me stay the night,” Angel then said, his dark eyes sincere as he looked up at Tara. Willow patted his head again.

“You can stay as long as you want,” Tara assured, because she did not want Buffy to catch Angel and victimize him again, now that Spike and Dru had left town.

“Yes,” Willow agreed. “And then Puppy can lick me! I used to sit on his face, and he made me feel lots better after Xander had been too rough.”

Two things warred in Tara; one was Amazon-Tara saying ‘Hell no!!’, and the other was Compassionate-Tara descending from her lotus and kicking Amazon-Tara’s butt, because she knew the truth about the benefits of vampire-licking. Willow had bitten her enough times for the blonde witch to become very appreciative of the healing gift of vampire saliva.

Tara blinked and Amazon-Tara went sullenly back into her hut.

“Okay,” Tara simply agreed. Angel’s acute embarrassment was suddenly shoved aside for sheer shock. Willow, on the bed, had an equally shocked expression, and Tara thought that her vampire might finally try to open her eyes.

“You... you don’t mind?” the redhead whispered, and Tara realized that Willow had been kidding--maybe just to needle Angel. There was no way Tara was going to deny Willow a chance at healing, though.

“I want him to. He can start now, okay? Um,” and Tara finally blushed. “Th-That is, if y-you want to, Angel.”

Angel could only stare blankly, open mouthed.

“I like my ‘Take-charge’ Tara,” Willow said softly from the bed.

* * *

The brutality done to Willow’s most intimate region made Tara cry.

She tried to let out the grief only once in Jenny’s arms--get it all out of the way so she could help Willow, but every night when she’d clean her vampire and re-apply the healing salve, she held back tears. Then she’d make an excuse to go outside, find a safe place, and cry her eyes out. And then she’d pray to her Goddess for mercy for her demon.

Angel, as an emissary of Goddess’ mercy, could be considered an embarrassing cliché, but Tara had no pride about this situation, she’d take anything she could get.

“I’ve, I’ve seen Puppy at his worse...but he’s never,” Willow was whispering to Tara as the witch ran a wet cloth on her vampire’s ravaged skin, removing the salve. “He’s never seen me at mine.”

“Will it bother you for him to see you like this?” Tara asked gently. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” Willow touched her, or tried to, with her bandaged hands. Even without the benefit of looking into Willow’s eyes, Tara knew her vampire was afraid.

“N-No, it’s okay. I wanna get well,” Willow said. “So we can have proper snuggles,” she added, trying to sound like her usual lecherous self, but she sounded more like a vulnerable, little girl instead.

“I just want you well, period.” Tara assured, and kissed her. “You can tell Angel to stop anytime you want, okay?” And, with what appeared to be his penchant for great timing, Angel quietly came back into Tara’s dorm room, carrying his freshly dried clothes.

* * *

Tara would dress Willow in her brother’s old flannel shirts. She had three of them and had taken them as a small act of spite when she left home. They were very worn, but they were soft, and warm, and though Willow usually slept in the nude, Tara wasn’t about to let her remain naked after how she’d found her. Angel gently unbuttoned one of those shirts now, revealing the large, cross shaped scar on Willow’s pale, slender chest.

Willow looked so resigned and sad, and Tara soothed fingers through her hair, and kissed her sad mouth.

“Not so bad,” Angel softly assured from where he now ran his tongue gently over the angry burn. “Not so bad, Little One.”

He began to tongue the scarred wound, and Willow placed her bandaged hands on his dark head and sighed.

It was like a lover’s touch, but not really; it was more loving than it was sexual. When Angel’s mouth reached Willow’s ravaged folds, that was when she arched, her shut eyes frowning in pain.

“Darling,” Tara whispered, laying comforting hands.

“Hold me,” Willow whimpered to her witch. “Don’t stop,” she pleaded to Angel.

Angel did what he could, using his mouth gently.

“Oh,” Willow then said after a long while, tensing. “Oh-ow. Oh. Ow. Ow Ow--”

Tara held tight to Willow as she pulled taut, and looked wildly down at Angel. He had stilled, but the sensations begun could not be stopped.

Willow shuddered in Tara’s arms with a mournful cry, tears suddenly squeezing from her shut eyes.

“Ow ow ow...” she whimpered softly, as she trembled from the repercussions of her painful orgasm. Tara held her tighter as she soothed and kissed her, her own emotions sympathetically distraught.

“Th-That’s good, right?” Willow finally gasped, tears in her voice. “Th-That means I’m not castrated.”

And Tara burst into tears.

* * *

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