[log] Magic fixer-upper (Active/Closed)

[fuzzynightmare]

Characters: Wiccan, Willow, Tara
Content: Willow and Tara attempt to heal Billy's wound and fail :(
Location: Wiccan's place, Bryant Park Hotel
Time of Day: afternoon
Warnings: None that I can possible imagine. Stuttering, babbling and spazzing?

Comments

[gentlewitch]

When Willow opened the door looking incredibly flaily, Tara knew the redhead must be as nervous as she was. "Hi," she said with an awkward wave and very little eye contact. This was weird. Here was Willow, and Tara didn't know what to say to her. That had never happened before. She sighed internally. They'd have to work this out. She couldn't help but feel awkward around this Willow, though. She was incredibly attractive with her longer hair, and Tara wasn't sure if that would constitute cheating or not.

She walked past Willow into the room and waved at Wiccan, averting her eyes to avoid any accidental looking at his pantslessness. "I'm Tara," she said. "B-but I guess you already know that." Noting his embarrassment, she smiled at him. "I, um, I'm s-sure you do. Sometimes y-you just can't help but take them o-off though."

Tara rolled her eyes at herself. She really had gotten the stuttering under control back in Sunnydale, though you wouldn't be able to tell now. She couldn't worry about that now, though. She had a patient! "W-willow said you n-needed help?" she said. "I don't have any, um, supplies here, but I'll see what I can do?"

She turned to Willow, putting aside the awkwardness for now. "Have you tried anything yet, or d-did I get here before you c-could?"

[fuzzynightmare]

Willow nodded her agreement. "Probably. I-- I don't think they had an expanded name. They were just creepy and military and liked to do experiments on people and monsters and-- it was messy and blarghish."

And now there was Tara. Who was here. Tara was in the room, and here, and there was magic and Tara and hereness. Altogether. In the room. With her. And Wiccan, who was still stuck in chair in his underwear. Willow cringed a little and shrugged apologetically at him, which was an extra awkward motion in itself and coupled with a furrowing of the brow. "Sorry. Sometimes the words escape before I can stop stop and herd them back into their place."

Even with apologising to Wiccan though, she could tell that things were still weird with Tara. Which made sense, but, well, was kinda still very obviously not a good thing. Also she still hasn't said anything and had actually been silent for maybe a minute now. "Uh! Yeah. Uhm, Wiccan got bitten by one of those crab things, and-- I haven't really done anything yet, I was just trying to feel it out with the magic, you know? And, well, it's kinda funikified. It doesn't feel like anything familiar, but, I only learned to kind of heal thing and stuff over the summer after--" After. "I mean, balance and put thing... I'm still not so good at it. I think maybe there has to be some kind of property thats keeping it from healing? Almost like venom except not. Like-- like if you try to imagine cheese that shouldn't be blue vein getting a blue vein that isn't really a blue vein? The wound is kinda like that."

She paused. "That was a terrible metaphor, but it's kinda like a regular wound, but not. Do you get what I meant?"

[inmyothertights]

"... You lost me at cheese," said Billy, his forehead creased in bewilderment. On the bright side, though, as long as people were talking, it was kind of less awkward in here. Willow had said Tara was a friend of hers, but they didn't seem very comfortable around each other. Not his business, he thought, glancing from Willow to Tara, but it certainly made the atmosphere in the hotel room uneasy. "But, uh ... yeah, it's not healing, and ..." He shook his head. "I don't know."

[gentlewitch]

"I think I, um, get it," Tara replied. "Kinda?" The tension in the room made her more nervous. She hadn't thought it'd be this... awkward. They were here to help someone. Tara took another deep breath, trying to push aside the thoughts fogging up her brain.

Tara smiled at Billy, though it wasn't the most successful smile ever. "I'm n-not entirely sure where cheese comes into it either," she said, moving closer to him. "Do you mind if I, um, take a look?" she asked.

She turned to Willow, raising an eyebrow in silent question. Did Willow want to try this together? Did Tara want to try this with her? She didn't know. When she had gone back to Willow in Sunnydale, it was only after a month of the redhead not using magic. She had to keep reminding herself, this Willow was not the one she'd left behind. It was entirely possible that she'd learned how to use the magic without... turning to the dark parts, and it was possible she'd learned balance, but Tara was skittish. It had been so recent for her, watching helplessly as Willow became more and more enamored of the power she had. It had broken Tara's heart, watching the magic that had come to symbolize the love between them turn into an addiction, something used to hurt people....

She turned back to Billy and looked at the bite on his leg. It didn't look good. It looked very, very bad. She would really have to get past the Willow and magic fear if she was going to help him. She closed her eyes and called up her magic. Wordlessly, she held a hand out to Willow, and waited.

[fuzzynightmare]

Clearly she needed to work more on the clarification and less on the babblification. I knew that much, Self. Willow smiled awkwardly at the other two and rolled her eyes at herself. "Yeah, sure, if you want things to make sense all the time." Her expression was jokingly unimpressed. "Pffft to that, I say. Fooey, even."

Willow stared at the hand for a half second, glancing at Billy and giving him a comforting smile before slowly reaching out to take Tara's hand and closing her eyes. "Don't worry, we'll get this sorted out in a jiffy," the redhead said brightly, flashing him another smile even with her eyes closed. THings had gotten off to an awkward start, but she'd brighten them right up.

She tried not to think too much about what was happening with Tara, and let her other hand hover over Billy's wound. It felt like-- like slime. She would have recoiled, could have, but she'd endured worse to bring Buffy back and she could do this to help Wiccan. "We need to get back that," she muttered, and as she tried to ease more magic out the strain spiked a little.

Willow frowned. Using magic shoulder be this hard. "Tara? Are getting the same thing I'm getting here?"

[inmyothertights]

He nodded when Tara asked to look, and watched the two of them rather than the wound. It ... was a little weird with both of them with their eyes shut, and their magic still felt strange ... Well, it was magic from another universe, or something, right? What if it wasn't the right magic - what if it wouldn't work because it didn't come from the same dimension as him? Oh, God, and now Willow was frowning and nothing was happening and this was definitely not getting sorted out in a jiffy, was it?

Billy paused, not sure if he should interrupt, but couldn't keep from asking, "What - what thing?"

[gentlewitch]

Tara frowned as she probed Billy's wound with her magic. She opened her eyes slowly and tried to smile reassuringly at the nervous boy. "I think she's, um, t-talking about the..." she trailed off, unsure how to describe it. "It feels like there's some sort of layer over it. Like, um, slime. Or, or sludge?" She closed her eyes and ran her hand through the air over it once again. She breathed deeply in concentration, and pulled from the witches' combined power to focus and probe the wound more deeply. It felt really strange, like nothing she'd ever felt before. Granted, there were a lot of things she'd never felt, but this was just... kind of gross. And the simple scanning of the bite was taking more out of her than she'd thought it would. Her magic was slower to respond, and it just felt sluggish. She wondered if it was the wound or the world causing that.

"W-willow? Are you noticing the, um... the drain? It feels strange."

[fuzzynightmare]

Willow couldn't open her eyes. The way her magic was going, it felt like... she sickened to her stomach. It felt bad, and not of the good and very much like a big bad wolf was about to blow her house down and leave the others in the rubble. If she opened her eyes they might see and that-- that would be bad. Very bad. Not good, but bad. Badbadbad.

"Nothing," she told him, but her voice sounded strained. Strained like a bad lie. Willow's brow furrowed at herself. Thanks for the vote of confidence there, self. "Well, I mean-- Tara's right. It's like there's tar and we're trying to wipe it off with a-- a cuetip. A broken cuetip."
Maybe if you stop messing around with the puppies and start bringing out the big guns we could get somewhere, a voice whispered in her mind, and she instantly froze. Here? That was going to happen here? But she had barely done anything!

"I-- I'm getting something," she managed to force out. "Uhm, Billy? When you use your magic, does it start feeling all funkified?"

[inmyothertights]

Tar with a broken Q-tip. Great. Billy shut his own eyes with a strained sort of sigh. "Uh, not really," he replied. "I mean - I don't know if it does, it's really difficult to concentrate, so I can't do it unless it's just ... a bit of glowing or a lightning bolt."

He opened his eyes again, looking from one witch to the other, and added, "You guys don't have to do this."

[gentlewitch]

It was strange, Tara knew, the way her magic felt. Like it was harder to use. But Willow's reaction was... beyond. Tara knew Willow. Maybe not this one, exactly, but she was still Willow and easy to read. And something was not right with her. Or her magic. It worried her.

"Willow, a-are you all right?" she asked. "If you need to take a minute, I can try some things..." She wished she had some potion ingredients. She was fairly skilled at healing magic, generally better at it than Willow, who was more into the big flashy damage spells. There were a few things she could try, but nothing that would work half as well as the most basic potion.

She smiled softly at Billy. "Of course we do," she said. "We help. It's k-kind of our thing." He smile widened. "From what Willow tells me, that's kind of your thing too?"

She sat back for a moment, gathering up her magic again. Something was making it harder to keep a hold on. "There are a couple different things we might try, but... I don't know how effective they'll be," she said. "We won't know until we see, though."