A Journey of a Thousand Miles
by Kirayoshi
Stuck in a Moment
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Rating
PG-13 to R for angst.
Summary
Two friends begin their recovery from the darkness that threatened to claim them. But Spike and Rack are still out there. And for Buffy and Willow, their only salvation may be in each other...
A Journey of a Thousand Miles
By Kirayoshi
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
--Chinese proverb
Chapter one;
Stuck In A Moment
"I'm not afraid of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard
I'm just trying to find a decent melody,
A song that I can sing in my own company
I never thought you were a fool,
But darling look at you
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere, baby.
You've got to get yourself together,
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it.
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it."
--U2
"Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of"
God, she thought to herself, when did it go so wrong?
Buffy asked herself that question time and again, especially for the last three nights. She was standing in the doorway of Willow's room, watching as her friend had finally stopped thrashing in her bed, and finally settled into a restless sleep. She had curled up into a fetal ball on her bed, her body covered in sweat, her once-lustrous red hair matted and plastered against a face grown sallow and sunken. Buffy could see her friend still shaking and twitching even in her sleep, and flinched with each spasm, knowing that she was in part responsible. What kinds of nightmares were plaguing the redhead's slumber? What demons visited her in her rest?
Her room looked strangely incomplete now. Buffy glanced at the shelves and the desk, seeing blank spaces that weren't there before. Magical artifacts and books that occupied those spaces were now packed away in cardboard boxes in the garage. She had helped Willow pack them away two days ago, the day after the incident.
After Willow dragged Dawn along to a floating magic dealer. After she got her fix from a warlock named Rack. After she drove a stolen car to escape a demon that she had summoned in her intoxicated state, with Dawn in the passenger seat. After she wrapped the car around a telephone pole, breaking Dawn's arm in the process. After she collapsed on the ground, wailing piteously, confessing that she couldn't stop, begging for help.
No matter how mad she was at Willow for hurting Dawn, and she was extremely mad, Buffy could not and would not abandon her friend. Especially since, in the end, it was her fault.
It was because of my calling, she cursed herself silently as she watched her friend suffer in her sleep, that she became a witch in the first place. And how many times had her magic come in handy in the past? Restoring Angel's soul, discovering arcane spells to defeat demons, healing Tara's mind from Glory's power. All that power, all that promise for doing good. And now, her power had turned against her. She sacrificed her chance to attend Harvard, or Oxford even, to remain in the Hell that was Sunnydale. All for Buffy. And now her decision to stay and help fight 'the good fight' was killing her.
Buffy vowed that she would do whatever she could to help her friend. She owed her that much. She helped Willow box her spell books, her candles, her blest herbs, her vials and bottles, her yak's cheese ("Don't ask," was the only thing Willow would say about that), and all of her other magic equipment. She stood by her bedside for the last two nights, watching as Willow thrashed and squirmed, sweat fountaining off her face. She held her hand, mopped her brow with a cold damp cloth, and did any small thing she could do to comfort her as she faced her withdrawal.
Buffy wasn't exactly in a position to be condescending to Willow in her ordeal. After all, while Willow was falling under the influence of her dark magicks, Buffy was dealing with an obsession of her own. An obsession just as dark as any magic. An obsession in a black leather duster jacket and short bleached hair.
An obsession once known as William Exeter. Now known as Spike.
Spike stirred something in Buffy, something primal, something animal. But it was something dark and sinister, something that ignited her nerves when she was with him that one night, but left her with nothing but shame and self-loathing the morning after. She hated him, she wanted nothing to do with him. But she couldn't deny the pull he had on her.
This time last year, she had told him that he was beneath her. Now, she wasn't so sure.
It wasn't that he improved in her eyes, but that she had fallen so far.
Was that it, she asked herself. Did I couple with him because I don't think I deserve better? Am I punishing myself for having fallen from Heaven, for being alive when I'm supposed to be dead?
Am I nothing more than a walking corpse?
The fact that Spike could actually do her damage, that he could actually hurt her, that's what clinched it. Whatever Willow had done to bring her back, it backfired somehow. She wasn't back, not fully, not in any real sense. She didn't feel love like she was once able to. She couldn't show compassion or friendship to the degree she enjoyed. She could only feel the negative emotions; fear, anger, hatred, disgust.
She didn't know what she was anymore. Was she human? Demon? Some half-formed combination of the two? Something that simply never existed anymore? Or some glorified zombie? She didn't know herself anymore.
She didn't know if she was any better than the things that she hunted.
She didn't know.
And not knowing was killing her.
>
"Okay," Tara murmured as she nailed a crucifix to the front door of the Summers house. "The cross is in place, holy water and garlic cloves buried at the threshold and under all windows, all proper incantations incanted, I'd say this house is as vamp-proof as it'll ever be."
"Thanks, Tara," Buffy smiled at the taller girl. "I just don't trust Spike anymore, and I don't want him near Dawn while I'm out on patrol."
"I thought Spike really liked Dawn," Tara mused. "And besides, as long as he still has that chip, he can't hurt anyone, can he?"
That's not true anymore, not really, Buffy thought, but kept her dark musings to herself. "Hey, it's government tech, you expect it to last that long?" Tara smirked at Buffy's humor. "Besides, he doesn't have to actually hit anyone to cause damage. I remember how he tried to turn us against each other before we went up against Adam."
"You think he would do that again?"
Buffy just smirked. "Yeah. He'll do what he wants to. He doesn't have a soul, he just has a chip."
"I guess," Tara nodded. She never fully understood Spike; he always acted like he was still the Mack Daddy of all the Sunnydale Vamps, but there were times, like when he risked all to rescue Dawn from those biker demons a couple of months ago. That night when they did the spell, when Buffy returned. The night when all was supposed to be right with the world. But it wasn't right. Not really.
Buffy, however, knew exactly what he was capable of, and she wasn't going to share that information with anyone, not as long as she could help it. She could easily predict what Xander would do if he heard about Buffy's coupling with Spike; first he'd go through the roof, then he'd accuse her of betraying the gang. And she was no longer certain that he'd be wrong.
"Hey, can we talk for a sec?" Tara asked suddenly, and Buffy was grateful for the distraction.
"Sure," she answered as she and Tara took seats at opposite ends of the couch. "What's on your mind?"
"I was wondering how Willow was doing," Tara admitted. "It's been a while since I've seen her."
"Ah, Willow," Buffy answered slowly. "She's okay. Well, not so much okay as, well, kinda sucky. She's been going through a rough time of it, with her quitting magic."
"Withdrawal, huh?" Tara asked. Buffy nodded silently. "I've seen this happen once before," Tara said quietly as she sat, nervously rearranging her hands on her lap. "A friend of mine, when I first started practicing Wicca. Started getting into darker magic, real heavy stuff. It changed her, made her harder, more withdrawn from her friends. She ended up testing a spell that was supposed to give her the power of flight." She looked intently at her lap at the sad memory. "She never regained the use of her legs. And she actually asked me to help her die during her withdrawal. She thought she could handle the dark stuff, but it ended up handling her."
"Yeah," Buffy agreed sadly. "I'm just glad that it only took the car crash to make Willow realize how deep she was in it. Dawn's arm will knit, she'll be fine. I'm just glad it wasn't more serious."
"Same here." Tara looked straight ahead, not particularly observing anything. "I'd like to talk to her, Buffy. I know someone who may be able to help her. She's handled addictions as a counselor before."
"I dunno if Willow's gonna want to talk to a shrink," Buffy admitted. "She was bound and determined to go through this alone."
"Well, she's not the only one here who has a resolve face," Tara smiled.
>
"I am..." she announced as she located the spaghetti, "THE IRON CHEF!" Dawn balanced the package of angel hair on her cast while grabbing a jar of pasta sauce from the cabinet. Tonight, she had agreed to make dinner while Buffy spoke with Tara, and Willow holed herself in her room. She had said something about doing some online investigation of the recent diamond theft, and seeing whether she could find any evidence of demonic activity involved with the case.
She located a Teflon pan, and started to brown a package of ground beef, when she noticed Willow, still in her pajamas and robe, padding her way into the kitchen. "Hey," Dawn greeted her. "Signs of life from the redhead. You okay?"
Willow gave a non-committal shrug of her shoulders. "Can't complain too loudly," she muttered. Her voice was still small and weak, her eyes bloodshot and framed by dark circles. Willow glanced briefly at the cast on Dawn's right arm, and turned away sharply.
"Yo, Willow," Dawn asked, "Buffy has me on strict orders to make sure you eat something. And I'm got spaghetti being prepped. You interested?"
"You're cooking?" Willow arched an eyebrow at the younger girl. "I dunno.."
"Hey!" Dawn grimaced, "what's wrong with my cooking?"
"Five words, Dawn," Willow smiled weakly at her, "'peanut butter and banana quesadillas'."
"Sure, bring that up," Dawn raised her eyebrows. "Hey, all greatness is the result of experimentation, right? Don't worry, I'm sticking to tradition here, I don't mess around with spaghetti."
Willow smirked slightly, and Dawn chuckled at her reaction. "Well, thanks anyway. Maybe I'll just have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
"One PB and J, coming up," Dawn dropped the pasta and sauce on the counter, and grabbed a loaf of bread from the cabinet. "Okay," she commented as she poked her head into the refrigerator. "We got crunchy, and we...we got crunchy. You good with crunchy?"
"Fine," Willow waived her hand.
"Okay, for jelly, we got grape, and we got strawberry..."
"GRAPE!" Willow said a bit quickly, and rather loudly. "Grape is fine." In the back of her mind, a blackly seductive man whispered to her; You taste like strawberries. She shuddered at the memory of Rack, and what she became because of him.
"You okay, Willow?" Dawn poked her head up over the fridge door to examine the redhead. Willow dropped her head, unable to face her friend's sister.
"Okay? I haven't done 'okay' since...oh, I don't know anymore. Tara's gone, Buffy doesn't really trust me, and I hurt you, all because of my magic."
Dawn stared intently at Willow. She needed to let her foster sister know that she wasn't alone. She placed her good hand on Willow's cheek...the one she slapped after the accident...and guided Willow's face to look at her own. "It's okay, Willow. Tara's still around, and Buffy hasn't given up on you. You made mistakes, but you're dealing with them. You're trying to make amends. And I can't imagine how tough you have it. The least we can do is be there for you."
"You sure?" Willow found herself fighting back the urge to cry as she was confronted with Dawn's forgiveness. "I mean, I don't blame you for being mad at me...."
"Yeah," Dawn admitted. "I was mad. I vented. But I'm not mad anymore. You need me, I'm there. Just call me Support-o-Girl."
Willow choked back a sob, and asked Dawn, "You mean we're cool?"
Dawn raised her cast, and smiled. "I now pronounce us cool."
Willow choked back her tears as she accepted Dawn's offered embrace. "Thanks, Dawnie," Willow wept quietly on the younger girl's shoulder. "I won't let you down this time."
"I know you won't," Dawn assured her. The two friends disengaged the hug, and Dawn went back to her cooking.
"Uh, Dawn," Willow asked, while Dawn was chopping mushrooms. "You've been hanging with Tara lately, right?"
Dawn stopped and placed the knife down on the cutting board. "A little. Why?"
"I dunno," Willow turned her head away, to hide her growing sorrow. "I was wondering how she was doing? I mean, probably better off without me, but still--"
"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Dawn offered. "She's in the living room right now, setting up an un-invite spell around the house. Apparently Spike's been getting uppity lately."
Willow's eyes snapped open and her head jerked up at Dawn's words. "Here? Oh Goddess," she moaned. Her eyes darted toward the back entrance, hoping for a possible escape route. "I can't let her see me like this! I gotta..."
"Too late," the familiar voice of the woman Willow had betrayed stopped her in her tracks. She turned around slowly, afraid to face her, but knowing she had no choice now. "Hey, Willow," Tara greeted her as warmly and as sweetly as Willow remembered her. The sight of her former girlfriend made her physically ache for the chance to hold her in her arms once more.
"Hey, Tara," Willow squeaked as the power of speech seemed to desert her. She saw Buffy standing by the doorway, either to offer support to her friends or to block Willow's last chance of escape. Willow tried to smile for Tara's benefit, but she knew she wasn't fooling anyone. "You're looking good."
"Thanks," Tara answered. "You look...well, you look..."
"Emaciated?" Willow volunteered.
Tara chuckled sympathetically. "I was going to say 'tired'. I guess the last few days have taken a lot out of you."
"Yeah," Willow admitted. "And I earned every restless night, haven't I? Threefold retribution and all that."
Tara wanted to run to Willow and embrace her, but feared spooking her. She just shook her head vehemently, saying, "No, Willow, it's not true. You don't deserve this pain, no one does. And you don't have to go through this alone, honey."
"Thanks for lying, Tara," Willow lowered her head in mounting shame. "Oh, I left all my magic stuff in the garage. You want anything, go ahead and pillage. Anything you don't take with you will be landfill by the end of the month."
Tara turned to Buffy, who nodded her head quietly. She looked back at Willow, who simply lowered her eyes again. "You're really giving up the magic, are you?"
"I have to, Tara," Willow said plainly. "I misused it. I used it on you against your will, I nearly got Dawn killed because of it...and...and I have to get rid of it. I can't do it anymore." She sat down at the breakfast table and lowered her head onto her hands. Hesitantly, Dawn placed the sandwich she had made for Willow on a plate and placed the plate in front of Willow. The sandwich went ignored, as Willow began to sob softly.
Tara stepped forward, standing behind her once-lover. She placed her hand on Willow's shoulder, and when she didn't try to shake the touch off, she ventured forward. "Tell you what, hon. I'll take your magic stuff with me, and we'll have Anya stash it at the Magic Box. When you're ready, it'll be there for you."
"No, Tara," Willow spoke firmly. "I'm through with magic."
"Don't say that, Willow," Tara pleaded with her. "It's not that bad, you just need to distance yourself for a while. To cleanse yourself."
Willow turned her head to face Tara, her haggard features screwed into the familiar sight of her resolve face. The terrible sight of what her beloved had become through the dark magic she had used silenced Tara with a shudder. "Don't you get it?" Willow wailed. "I'm an addict! I can't let myself go down that road again. It'd be like bringing an alcoholic into a bar. I can't do it anymore." She swallowed hard and brushed Tara's hand away from her. "Don't fight me on this, Tara. We're not together anymore, and we're not going to be together again. I love you, babe, and I always will, but I can't be with you anymore. I can't get that close to magic again. I'm sorry, but it has to be this way." She pushed the plate away from her, and got up from the table. "Sorry, Dawnie, I just lost what little appetite I had." She rushed out the door, not noticing Buffy as she barreled past her.
She rushed into her bedroom, threw herself on the bed, and allowed her grief to consume her. All she had wanted was to help. That's why she turned to magic. To help her friends, to help Buffy. To restore Angel's soul. To save Buffy from the demons and monsters of the Hellmouth. To restore Tara's sanity. To bring Buffy back to life.
But these feats required power. A power that Willow thought she could control. And now that power which she tapped into so freely was destroying her. Her usefulness to the cause was no more. She was a danger to her friends, to Tara, to Buffy. She decided in that moment, with a terrible certainty, what she had to do. She slowly rose from her bed, grim purpose filling her being, and located a suitcase in her closet.
"Willow," Buffy's voice slowly filtered through the miasma of her self-loathing. "How long are you gonna hole up in there?" When Willow didn't answer, Buffy tried again. "Okay, Wills, I'm gonna just camp out here until you let me in. You okay with that?"
Ten seconds later, Buffy heard the door unlatch, and saw Willow's worn face peering out at her. Upon entering the bedroom, Buffy first noticed the suitcase. "So," she said casually. "Planning a little trip?"
Willow said nothing, she just plopped herself down on the bed, folding her hands on her lap.
"Willow," she spoke in the most comforting tones she could summon. "I know what you're going through. I was there, remember? I blamed myself for what happened to Angel, what he did to Jenny, to Kendra...to you. I thought the best thing I could do for everyone was to run away. I was wrong then. Just as you're wrong to try and face this...thing yourself."
"What other options are there?" Willow whispered. "There's not exactly a Witches Anonymous group out there. No twelve-step program for magic addicts."
Buffy sat next to Willow on the bed, and placed her hand on Willow's knee. "Maybe there is." She withdrew a slip of paper from her pocket, and handed it to Willow. "Tara's out in the garage grabbing your magic stuff. She gave me this card." Willow looked at the name and number on the card: Victoria Ramirez, Councilor. "Tara said she's a nice lady, and that she handles addiction cases at the college."
Willow snorted derisively. "No way she's seen a case like mine."
"Hey, who knows?" Buffy offered brightly. "She lives in Sunnydale, she may have seen everything." That got a chuckle out of Willow. "Look, Willow, whatever you do, don't do it alone. Not when you don't have to." She got up from the bed, and faced Willow once more. "Look, I'm going to get Tara safely back, then I'm going out on patrol. Don't make any decisions for a while, right?" Willow sniffed, and nodded her head.
As Buffy was on her way out the door, Willow spoke; "Buffy?" The slayer turned her head toward her friend. "Don't die on me."
"I'm not planning on it," Buffy smiled for Willow's benefit, and left.
Willow allowed her grief to wash over her, through her and past her. She finally managed to control her wracking sobs, to dry her eyes, and to regain some semblance of coherent thought. She glanced at the card in her hand, looking at the phone number beneath the name.
Don't do it alone. Not when you don't have to.
Buffy's words rang through her head, resonating with a clarity, a wisdom that Willow needed to hear.
She reached across the bed, taking the phone in her hand, and dialing the number. After three rings, a gentle voice greeted her; "Hello."
"Victoria Ramirez?" Willow asked.
"This is she," the woman answered.
"Uh, hi. You don't know me, but my friend gave me your number..."