Fic: In the Wolf's Mouth (Willow, PG13)
The ficathon has been delayed for a month, but my fic is done and I feel better when they are posted rather than lurking on the hard drive so I thought I'd post today. If you've read my Willow fic Triplicate, this is a semi-sequel, though it's more securely set in the Rulesverse than its predecessor.
Title In the Wolf's Mouth
Author Brutti ma buoni
Rating PG13
Word Count 2500
Prompt For the whichwillow ficathon. Prompt: Something causes Willow to return to dark magic (gen)
A/N: This story is vaguely located in my post-series AU, the Rulesverse. You only need to know that Willow and the gang now run the international Slayer Council from that Scottish castle, and that Willow has been doing some major magicks ever since the collapse of Sunnydale. If you know the Rulesverse, this fits in at September 2007.
Nella bocca del lupo
Sui piedi del’ariete
Ai corni del cervo
Sotto gli occhi del’aquilio...
Willow never could speak foreign languages, and she wasn't 100% on this Italian even now. But this incantation flowed from her, the way it always did when the magicks were running at high flood-tide. The eagle was with her. The rift would be healed.
The world would be saved.
Again.
So why was Giles watching her with such concern?
*
Willow didn’t like the part of herself that sneaked around the Slayer Council’s castle headquarters that night.
Not physically, of course. She grew out of that a long time ago. Now, Willow could send emissaries of thought and hearing through the ancient stones themselves. It’s all connected, and when you understand that, you have the power.
So she sent her self to hear in the inner sanctum of the Council. Because Giles was there, and Buffy, and they were the most dangerous people in the world to her.
*
“It happened again.” Giles sounded creaky. The way he always sounded round Willow now. Old and worried. Sometimes Willow felt she was draining the life-force that his relationship with Faith was giving Giles in such abundance. Parasitic Willow, sucking away life with her difficult and worrisome behaviours.
“You’re sure?” Buffy sounded electric-hot and taut; Slayer on the edge of action. She had seen the Witch in Willow a few months before, but she still didn’t truly believe that this disaster was happening again. Willow had been keeping tabs on her disbelief, nudging it along with strategic applications of girlie babble, and recreational baking sessions to ‘get away from all that magic and admin’. As though Buffy weren’t marinated in the Council to her core. And as though Willow didn’t have magicks where once she’d had blood and bone.
But it seemed like disbelief was running short in Buffy’s world. Giles was way ahead of her.
“I watched most carefully this time. Listened too. Willow was deep in the magicks, far beyond what we had planned as her strategy for healing the rift. She called on the wolf, the ram and the hart. I don’t think she was conscious of having done so.”
(Wrong, Giles. Willow knew, but she also knew how to keep those three tricksters in line now. Nothing passed the eagle’s eye. The eagle was new, and Willow was enthralled by what he offered - yet more power over others. She tried not to wonder where he came from or what his price was. She'd find out, given time. No sense borrowing trouble.)
Buffy’s sigh shook the castle foundations. “What are we going to do? Willow’s our go-to woman. She’s saved the world so many times, but it just keeps coming and if we don’t keep using her-” Silence, as Buffy heard her own words convict the Slayer Council of treating Willow as something less than human.
“Maybe she just needs a vacation.” Buffy said it without conviction. Giles paused.
Then, just then, they might have saved the situation. But they were busy people who loved Willow and no longer understood her. So they hoped she would be all right after a few weeks’ break.
So Giles said, “Yes. Perhaps that would be sensible.”
Willow took a break from the Council. But the Witch and the magicks? Can’t take a break from who you are.
*
Willow came back to the castle after six weeks. Six weeks when the world hadn’t ended for lack of Wicca goodness.
When Willow came back, it didn't go as she had planned. She'd expected, with the part of her that was still Willow, to return refreshed to the bosom of her buddies. To laugh and say yeah, things had gotten on top of her but she was better now. To talk about her retreat, and the Coven, and the good things she had rediscovered.
All of that would have been true. Surface-true, slip-slidey lying truth that didn't talk about the sensation of the Witch taking over Willow's mind; or the seductive power of the eagle flexing its wings in her power; or Willow's fears of losing herself to the magicks; but kinda sorta true nonetheless. It might have held.
But the Council didn't leave her to come back in her own time. The Council, meaning Buffy, called her cell and left a message.
"Hey Will, hope you're all retreated out now. We have a thing going here. Need your help. Bring magicks!"
Buffy's voice was strained. She knew what she was asking. The faux-casual language didn't hide it.
It broke the retreat. No more striving for better things.
So when Willow came back, she brought the eagle.
*
Was Willow the eagle? Was the Witch? Was the eagle just a metaphor, or was that really how Willow flew to Slayer HQ, on his wings?
Willow couldn't answer those questions. She just lived them.
The eagle controlled the magicks. Fought demons. Kept the wolf, the ram and the hart under surveillance, and struck mercilessly when they strayed from their accepted territories.
The Witch was Willow. Or controlled Willow. Or controlled the eagle. Didn't it? That voice in the head that narrated Willow's life, with its bitter edge and threatening manner. It was in control of the eagle's power, wasn't it?
Sometimes, Willow felt like she was a guest in her own brain. It was getting crowded. Something was going to be squeezed out.
Probably Willow.
*
It was the eagle. It was the Witch.
It couldn't possibly be Willow, could it? Not doing this.
Not Willow overflying the castle, seeing detail pin-sharp from 2000 feet up.
Not Willow spinning the incantations which drew a web close about the castle. Cutting the communications. Blocking out the sky. Drawing the bubble tight round Slayer HQ, because that was where Buffy was and Giles was. And they were the danger she faced.
Cast the net. Then begin.
The spells started to creep over the castle. Silencing spells. Petrifaction spells. Spells to bind. Spells to cause pain. They caught Buffy and Giles, of course.
But they caught others too. That was their weakness, because nobody thought those others were important. Except perhaps Willow.
*
The Witch and the eagle, atavistic spirits, were fighting Willow's subconscious. What had they missed? They'd missed Willow's essential self, and the knowledge she could bring.
They lived the archetypes of magic. They were deep, awesome with power.
They were not calibrated for a global organisation with a high spec telecommunications network. When Slayer HQ went dark, it was noted immediately.
Vi, out on a local mission in the Highlands, sent the first site intel reports within three hours. Dawn travelled north from her new university to take over wrangler SSO duties. The eagle-Witch saw them, of course, but watched only their manoeuvrings. The messages they were passing were invisible to it. Willow would have known. But Willow wasn't in charge now.
So across the globe, forces were mobilised. Xander's heart missed a beat, somewhere outside Ouagadougou. Too far to come home in time to give the crayon breaky speech again. Someone else would have to cope.
Cordelia called the insurance brokers to make certain they were covered for Act of Witch.
Faith managed to hijack a satellite phone near Irkutsk and took charge of the world saving mission that Willow had been called back for. They had another witch on the spot within hours. Not Willow, but good enough for the purpose, it turned out.
In Los Angeles, Wesley and Angel conferred, and ultimately drew straws for the really crappy part of the job. It was Wesley, with Illyria as backup, who went to Wolfram and Hart and asked to speak to Lilah Morgan.
*
Sometimes, you pick your enemy, and you make your bargain. The Slayer Council were banking on the wolf, the ram and the hart having a thing against the eagle that newly had them under control.
They were right.
So when the Slayer forces started to mass outside the castle, it wasn't only Vi and Wesley and Illyria that came. The Slayer Council fought evil with evil.
*
The eagle, soaring over its triumph, sensed suddenly that it was under threat.
The Witch, distracted, let slip a spell or two from her web, and left holes for seers and warlocks to enter.
The eagle, astounded, began to plummet.
The Witch, screaming, crumbled to dust.
So at the end, there was only Willow, standing at the gates of the castle, staring at the oncoming Slayer army and holding up her hands in surrender.
*
At Slayer Central, the repercussions were discussed.
The wolf, ram and hart were free again, but (aided by some sharp magical controls issued by the Coven) they'd abided by the deal so far and had returned to their legal precincts to plot again. They would be free, sometime. It would be bad. They had new knowledge to use against the Council in future. But it had been necessary, at this time and in this place, to ally with them. The bitter taste of that would take some time to fade.
Buffy and Giles, and the other Slayers and SSOs in the castle had been freed, checked over medically, tended where necessary and offered compassionate leave if they wanted to get away. Some of the newer people even took it. Buffy barely sat still for the stitches in her face before heading into the control room to join the discussion.
Willow was there. Not bound nor gagged. Just sitting. A small, pale woman in her late twenties. Hair a little greasy, skin a little sallow, as though she hadn't been taking care of herself lately.
What was there to say? The Slayer Council faced its latest foe, and was silent.
*
"I should have told you." Willow started. "That I was having trouble with the magicks again."
"Yes. You should." Buffy agreed. That was easy enough.
"Maybe you should have seen it," Willow tried next. Self-justification is easy.
"Perhaps we should." Giles said it stiffly. "But as a rule we don't regard our comrades as enemies. Evidently, in your case, we should have learned better from past experience."
"I'm sorry." Willow said, pointlessly.
"Too late," Buffy responded.
Silence again.
Wesley broke it. Just enough of an outsider to want to move on. "What next?"
No response.
Till, “Oh Willow. What are we going to do with you?”
Giles’s sigh stung.
“I’m not a kid. You don’t have to do anything with me.”
Buffy had been sitting in her Chair of the Council pose, very professional and objective. Now she leant forwards, both hands on the conference table. “Willow. We can’t keep on facing you down this way, whenever the magicks slip. You just planned to kill us, and it’s only our major defences and a deal with the almost literal devil that saved our lives. It took an alliance of awesome power to bring you down this time, and we couldn’t have done it if your whole being had been given over to the Witch. Wesley thought he was probably heading a suicide mission. Okay, you say it was some possession thing, but it was caused by your magicks. Please don’t ever come here and say we don’t have to do anything with you.” She was shouting by the end. Willow couldn’t answer.
Giles’s glasses were being cleaned. Comfortable, familiar sight. His words were anything but.
“We need the magicks. You are the most powerful witch any of us knows. We have used your power. We will continue to require it. But we cannot allow it to possess you.”
Willow just managed to suppress a shrug. Not news to anyone present. “So what does that mean?”
Giles sighed again, but with regret. “It means you need to give us your power.”
The room was very quiet. Willow felt it was her turn to speak, but all that came out was, “What? I don’t-How could you even-?”
Buffy took over. “We talked to the Coven. There’s a spell that would let you give away your magic, but keep it safe. Like, a mystic childproof jar. We keep it in a closet here-”
The murmur of, “Something rather better protected, I feel,” from Giles didn’t break the tension, or Buffy’s sentence.
“- and when there’s a really, really big deal where we need you, you come here, get the magicks out of the jar and help. That’s assuming you still want to save the world.”
Willow flinched at the last line. Buffy's mask had slipped again.
“Of course I- But you don’t get it. I can’t just drop the magicks and pick them up again. That's not how it works.”
“We think it is the only way you can be... safe.” That was Giles, very sober. “Having magic constantly, it grows with you. Which makes you stronger, but also more dangerous. We would be with you all the time when you have the magicks in future. If you agree to this, of course, and to work with us.”
Buffy: “Would you? Would you come back, if you left your magic here? Would you help?”
Somehow, they were already negotiating the terms of her surrender. Willow wasn't waving the white flag. “I don’t want to give it up.”
“None of us wanted this. But you are dangerous. More so than some enemies we have...” Killed. Buffy didn't say it.
“What if I don’t?” Willow did say it. She had to know.
There was a long, very long silence.
“I would not advise that.” And that was Buffy, that cold, distant official voice. That had once belonged to Willow’s best friend.
*
So Willow volunteered for amputation. The Coven built the spell. Illyria found a suitable 'childproof jar' at the Deeper Well. Willow spat her magicks out like the bitter pill they always had been. Or so she was told.
After, she felt empty. What was Willow without magicks? Just some techno-geek without a seat on the Council. With a grudging home in a castle she’d almost destroyed. To come back to her powers only when called for the darkest of missions.
*
It took a while before Willow herself started to flow back to fill the voids that magic left. Longer to get used to the occasional days when the call would come, and her magicks would rush back into her system, in time to save the world again.
Every time, there were people watching her, poised to end her, if the magicks took over.
Willow believed that, one day, they would. Hard to live with.
*
But in between times, something had to happen in Willow's life. Something without magic, eagles, witches and death.
Slayer Support Officer Rosenberg considered the Council’s vacancies and headed for Australia, where a telecoms expert was needed. The future was... not what she had expected.
***
Title In the Wolf's Mouth
Author Brutti ma buoni
Rating PG13
Word Count 2500
Prompt For the whichwillow ficathon. Prompt: Something causes Willow to return to dark magic (gen)
A/N: This story is vaguely located in my post-series AU, the Rulesverse. You only need to know that Willow and the gang now run the international Slayer Council from that Scottish castle, and that Willow has been doing some major magicks ever since the collapse of Sunnydale. If you know the Rulesverse, this fits in at September 2007.
Nella bocca del lupo
Sui piedi del’ariete
Ai corni del cervo
Sotto gli occhi del’aquilio...
Willow never could speak foreign languages, and she wasn't 100% on this Italian even now. But this incantation flowed from her, the way it always did when the magicks were running at high flood-tide. The eagle was with her. The rift would be healed.
The world would be saved.
Again.
So why was Giles watching her with such concern?
*
Willow didn’t like the part of herself that sneaked around the Slayer Council’s castle headquarters that night.
Not physically, of course. She grew out of that a long time ago. Now, Willow could send emissaries of thought and hearing through the ancient stones themselves. It’s all connected, and when you understand that, you have the power.
So she sent her self to hear in the inner sanctum of the Council. Because Giles was there, and Buffy, and they were the most dangerous people in the world to her.
*
“It happened again.” Giles sounded creaky. The way he always sounded round Willow now. Old and worried. Sometimes Willow felt she was draining the life-force that his relationship with Faith was giving Giles in such abundance. Parasitic Willow, sucking away life with her difficult and worrisome behaviours.
“You’re sure?” Buffy sounded electric-hot and taut; Slayer on the edge of action. She had seen the Witch in Willow a few months before, but she still didn’t truly believe that this disaster was happening again. Willow had been keeping tabs on her disbelief, nudging it along with strategic applications of girlie babble, and recreational baking sessions to ‘get away from all that magic and admin’. As though Buffy weren’t marinated in the Council to her core. And as though Willow didn’t have magicks where once she’d had blood and bone.
But it seemed like disbelief was running short in Buffy’s world. Giles was way ahead of her.
“I watched most carefully this time. Listened too. Willow was deep in the magicks, far beyond what we had planned as her strategy for healing the rift. She called on the wolf, the ram and the hart. I don’t think she was conscious of having done so.”
(Wrong, Giles. Willow knew, but she also knew how to keep those three tricksters in line now. Nothing passed the eagle’s eye. The eagle was new, and Willow was enthralled by what he offered - yet more power over others. She tried not to wonder where he came from or what his price was. She'd find out, given time. No sense borrowing trouble.)
Buffy’s sigh shook the castle foundations. “What are we going to do? Willow’s our go-to woman. She’s saved the world so many times, but it just keeps coming and if we don’t keep using her-” Silence, as Buffy heard her own words convict the Slayer Council of treating Willow as something less than human.
“Maybe she just needs a vacation.” Buffy said it without conviction. Giles paused.
Then, just then, they might have saved the situation. But they were busy people who loved Willow and no longer understood her. So they hoped she would be all right after a few weeks’ break.
So Giles said, “Yes. Perhaps that would be sensible.”
Willow took a break from the Council. But the Witch and the magicks? Can’t take a break from who you are.
*
Willow came back to the castle after six weeks. Six weeks when the world hadn’t ended for lack of Wicca goodness.
When Willow came back, it didn't go as she had planned. She'd expected, with the part of her that was still Willow, to return refreshed to the bosom of her buddies. To laugh and say yeah, things had gotten on top of her but she was better now. To talk about her retreat, and the Coven, and the good things she had rediscovered.
All of that would have been true. Surface-true, slip-slidey lying truth that didn't talk about the sensation of the Witch taking over Willow's mind; or the seductive power of the eagle flexing its wings in her power; or Willow's fears of losing herself to the magicks; but kinda sorta true nonetheless. It might have held.
But the Council didn't leave her to come back in her own time. The Council, meaning Buffy, called her cell and left a message.
"Hey Will, hope you're all retreated out now. We have a thing going here. Need your help. Bring magicks!"
Buffy's voice was strained. She knew what she was asking. The faux-casual language didn't hide it.
It broke the retreat. No more striving for better things.
So when Willow came back, she brought the eagle.
*
Was Willow the eagle? Was the Witch? Was the eagle just a metaphor, or was that really how Willow flew to Slayer HQ, on his wings?
Willow couldn't answer those questions. She just lived them.
The eagle controlled the magicks. Fought demons. Kept the wolf, the ram and the hart under surveillance, and struck mercilessly when they strayed from their accepted territories.
The Witch was Willow. Or controlled Willow. Or controlled the eagle. Didn't it? That voice in the head that narrated Willow's life, with its bitter edge and threatening manner. It was in control of the eagle's power, wasn't it?
Sometimes, Willow felt like she was a guest in her own brain. It was getting crowded. Something was going to be squeezed out.
Probably Willow.
*
It was the eagle. It was the Witch.
It couldn't possibly be Willow, could it? Not doing this.
Not Willow overflying the castle, seeing detail pin-sharp from 2000 feet up.
Not Willow spinning the incantations which drew a web close about the castle. Cutting the communications. Blocking out the sky. Drawing the bubble tight round Slayer HQ, because that was where Buffy was and Giles was. And they were the danger she faced.
Cast the net. Then begin.
The spells started to creep over the castle. Silencing spells. Petrifaction spells. Spells to bind. Spells to cause pain. They caught Buffy and Giles, of course.
But they caught others too. That was their weakness, because nobody thought those others were important. Except perhaps Willow.
*
The Witch and the eagle, atavistic spirits, were fighting Willow's subconscious. What had they missed? They'd missed Willow's essential self, and the knowledge she could bring.
They lived the archetypes of magic. They were deep, awesome with power.
They were not calibrated for a global organisation with a high spec telecommunications network. When Slayer HQ went dark, it was noted immediately.
Vi, out on a local mission in the Highlands, sent the first site intel reports within three hours. Dawn travelled north from her new university to take over wrangler SSO duties. The eagle-Witch saw them, of course, but watched only their manoeuvrings. The messages they were passing were invisible to it. Willow would have known. But Willow wasn't in charge now.
So across the globe, forces were mobilised. Xander's heart missed a beat, somewhere outside Ouagadougou. Too far to come home in time to give the crayon breaky speech again. Someone else would have to cope.
Cordelia called the insurance brokers to make certain they were covered for Act of Witch.
Faith managed to hijack a satellite phone near Irkutsk and took charge of the world saving mission that Willow had been called back for. They had another witch on the spot within hours. Not Willow, but good enough for the purpose, it turned out.
In Los Angeles, Wesley and Angel conferred, and ultimately drew straws for the really crappy part of the job. It was Wesley, with Illyria as backup, who went to Wolfram and Hart and asked to speak to Lilah Morgan.
*
Sometimes, you pick your enemy, and you make your bargain. The Slayer Council were banking on the wolf, the ram and the hart having a thing against the eagle that newly had them under control.
They were right.
So when the Slayer forces started to mass outside the castle, it wasn't only Vi and Wesley and Illyria that came. The Slayer Council fought evil with evil.
*
The eagle, soaring over its triumph, sensed suddenly that it was under threat.
The Witch, distracted, let slip a spell or two from her web, and left holes for seers and warlocks to enter.
The eagle, astounded, began to plummet.
The Witch, screaming, crumbled to dust.
So at the end, there was only Willow, standing at the gates of the castle, staring at the oncoming Slayer army and holding up her hands in surrender.
*
At Slayer Central, the repercussions were discussed.
The wolf, ram and hart were free again, but (aided by some sharp magical controls issued by the Coven) they'd abided by the deal so far and had returned to their legal precincts to plot again. They would be free, sometime. It would be bad. They had new knowledge to use against the Council in future. But it had been necessary, at this time and in this place, to ally with them. The bitter taste of that would take some time to fade.
Buffy and Giles, and the other Slayers and SSOs in the castle had been freed, checked over medically, tended where necessary and offered compassionate leave if they wanted to get away. Some of the newer people even took it. Buffy barely sat still for the stitches in her face before heading into the control room to join the discussion.
Willow was there. Not bound nor gagged. Just sitting. A small, pale woman in her late twenties. Hair a little greasy, skin a little sallow, as though she hadn't been taking care of herself lately.
What was there to say? The Slayer Council faced its latest foe, and was silent.
*
"I should have told you." Willow started. "That I was having trouble with the magicks again."
"Yes. You should." Buffy agreed. That was easy enough.
"Maybe you should have seen it," Willow tried next. Self-justification is easy.
"Perhaps we should." Giles said it stiffly. "But as a rule we don't regard our comrades as enemies. Evidently, in your case, we should have learned better from past experience."
"I'm sorry." Willow said, pointlessly.
"Too late," Buffy responded.
Silence again.
Wesley broke it. Just enough of an outsider to want to move on. "What next?"
No response.
Till, “Oh Willow. What are we going to do with you?”
Giles’s sigh stung.
“I’m not a kid. You don’t have to do anything with me.”
Buffy had been sitting in her Chair of the Council pose, very professional and objective. Now she leant forwards, both hands on the conference table. “Willow. We can’t keep on facing you down this way, whenever the magicks slip. You just planned to kill us, and it’s only our major defences and a deal with the almost literal devil that saved our lives. It took an alliance of awesome power to bring you down this time, and we couldn’t have done it if your whole being had been given over to the Witch. Wesley thought he was probably heading a suicide mission. Okay, you say it was some possession thing, but it was caused by your magicks. Please don’t ever come here and say we don’t have to do anything with you.” She was shouting by the end. Willow couldn’t answer.
Giles’s glasses were being cleaned. Comfortable, familiar sight. His words were anything but.
“We need the magicks. You are the most powerful witch any of us knows. We have used your power. We will continue to require it. But we cannot allow it to possess you.”
Willow just managed to suppress a shrug. Not news to anyone present. “So what does that mean?”
Giles sighed again, but with regret. “It means you need to give us your power.”
The room was very quiet. Willow felt it was her turn to speak, but all that came out was, “What? I don’t-How could you even-?”
Buffy took over. “We talked to the Coven. There’s a spell that would let you give away your magic, but keep it safe. Like, a mystic childproof jar. We keep it in a closet here-”
The murmur of, “Something rather better protected, I feel,” from Giles didn’t break the tension, or Buffy’s sentence.
“- and when there’s a really, really big deal where we need you, you come here, get the magicks out of the jar and help. That’s assuming you still want to save the world.”
Willow flinched at the last line. Buffy's mask had slipped again.
“Of course I- But you don’t get it. I can’t just drop the magicks and pick them up again. That's not how it works.”
“We think it is the only way you can be... safe.” That was Giles, very sober. “Having magic constantly, it grows with you. Which makes you stronger, but also more dangerous. We would be with you all the time when you have the magicks in future. If you agree to this, of course, and to work with us.”
Buffy: “Would you? Would you come back, if you left your magic here? Would you help?”
Somehow, they were already negotiating the terms of her surrender. Willow wasn't waving the white flag. “I don’t want to give it up.”
“None of us wanted this. But you are dangerous. More so than some enemies we have...” Killed. Buffy didn't say it.
“What if I don’t?” Willow did say it. She had to know.
There was a long, very long silence.
“I would not advise that.” And that was Buffy, that cold, distant official voice. That had once belonged to Willow’s best friend.
*
So Willow volunteered for amputation. The Coven built the spell. Illyria found a suitable 'childproof jar' at the Deeper Well. Willow spat her magicks out like the bitter pill they always had been. Or so she was told.
After, she felt empty. What was Willow without magicks? Just some techno-geek without a seat on the Council. With a grudging home in a castle she’d almost destroyed. To come back to her powers only when called for the darkest of missions.
*
It took a while before Willow herself started to flow back to fill the voids that magic left. Longer to get used to the occasional days when the call would come, and her magicks would rush back into her system, in time to save the world again.
Every time, there were people watching her, poised to end her, if the magicks took over.
Willow believed that, one day, they would. Hard to live with.
*
But in between times, something had to happen in Willow's life. Something without magic, eagles, witches and death.
Slayer Support Officer Rosenberg considered the Council’s vacancies and headed for Australia, where a telecoms expert was needed. The future was... not what she had expected.
***