power_play
I don’t know what happened… well, I know what happened, but how it happened is a whole nother story. I was doing the spell and it was like everything was gonna be okay, and Kennedy was gonna be so surprised when we et for lunch and she had her powers back and then it didn’t happen that way t all. It happened… what happened was different.
There was a crash in the lobby and Giles and I ran outside to find out what appened. I hadn’t even made it to the door, the smoke from the candles hadn’t even dissipated, before I heard the first scream that sounded like Dawnie. It was that scream that made my blood run cold, scared me more than… well, there’ve been a lot of scary things since high school, and this was pretty high on the list.
When I got to the landing, it was all I could do not to just stare. A giant dragony thing, three heads and wings and kinda scaly was making a ruckus in the lobby. I didn’t know how it got in, it was too big to fit through a door, and there wasn’t a hole in the ceiling or the wall, so it hadn’t come in, it had just… appeared, or…
I felt sick to my stomach cause I knew there were only so many ways that thing could’ve squeezed into the Hyperion, and most of them could be… I didn’t want to think it. I just wanted to fix it.
“Caedo!” I shouted from my place on the balcony, but the spell didn’t do anything to the dragon. It bounced off its leathery hide and came flinging back at me, but I waved my hand and it bounced away from me and hit a brunette girl smack in the stomach. She doubled over and didn’t get back up and I realized that I didn’t even know her name. There were so many of them, and it was just like when Sunnydale ended and they all died and I didn’t even know them at all.
“NO!” I screamed, because regardless of what happened next, regardless of whether we won or lost or whether this was really all my fault, I’d killed her. My spell. Kennedy was right, Giles was right, I was an amateur and that girl was dead. The monster rose up and started to get in my face, but Giles knocked me out of the way. The monster got him instead, and Giles fell down, unconscious or dead or hopefully unconscious. I flattened myself against the wall, as far away from the dragon as I could get without actually running away, and just stood there, panting, watching as the slayers tried to kill this monster that was going to kill them.
I wanted to kill it, crush it. I wanted to be as strong as Buffy was, as strong as Faith was, as strong as all the Slayers had been once upon a time, strong like an amazon the way Tara would’ve wanted me to be, but I wasn’t. I was just Willow, the stupid witch who’d gotten us all into trouble in the first place. I looked around frantically and saw a cement bust and I picked it up and threw it at one of the heads with all my might.
The cement head and the dragon head collided, but the monster hardly noticed, and it fell to the floor and shattered, harmless and a million pieces. It’s long neck rose up and all of a sudden I was eye to eye with the thing, and I started throwing things, anything I could find, but it wasn’t helping. Nothing was helping. A growl sounded and there was a wolf, there was Oz being a wolf, tearing into the thing, biting and ripping and shredding and then it was over, at least for a second because…
I wanted to throw up, purge myself of it, but at the same time I wished it had eaten me because I was going to have to tell them the truth, that it was me that made this happen. I sank to the ground and started to sob, started crying so hard that I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to stop, and even if I could, I wouldn’t have wanted to, because I needed that release so bad. I didn’t even notice when there wasn’t any monster anymore, when there was just dust and people crying and people dead from the massacre.
When I finally looked up, Oz was standing there, covered in dragon blood and looking stoic and brave but somehow broken and I wanted to say something, wanted to thank him for saving my life, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything, or do anything except cry some more because I was too weak. I wasn’t strong like Buffy, or Faith, or the Slayers, or an amazon, and I hadn’t been in a very long time.
I wasn’t strong enough to do what I had to do next, to help Buffy and Giles take a count of the bodies and call their parents and tell them that we hadn’t protected them. I wasn’t strong enough to tell them that it was all my fault. But I had to, so I turned away slowly and headed down the stairs.
There was a crash in the lobby and Giles and I ran outside to find out what appened. I hadn’t even made it to the door, the smoke from the candles hadn’t even dissipated, before I heard the first scream that sounded like Dawnie. It was that scream that made my blood run cold, scared me more than… well, there’ve been a lot of scary things since high school, and this was pretty high on the list.
When I got to the landing, it was all I could do not to just stare. A giant dragony thing, three heads and wings and kinda scaly was making a ruckus in the lobby. I didn’t know how it got in, it was too big to fit through a door, and there wasn’t a hole in the ceiling or the wall, so it hadn’t come in, it had just… appeared, or…
I felt sick to my stomach cause I knew there were only so many ways that thing could’ve squeezed into the Hyperion, and most of them could be… I didn’t want to think it. I just wanted to fix it.
“Caedo!” I shouted from my place on the balcony, but the spell didn’t do anything to the dragon. It bounced off its leathery hide and came flinging back at me, but I waved my hand and it bounced away from me and hit a brunette girl smack in the stomach. She doubled over and didn’t get back up and I realized that I didn’t even know her name. There were so many of them, and it was just like when Sunnydale ended and they all died and I didn’t even know them at all.
“NO!” I screamed, because regardless of what happened next, regardless of whether we won or lost or whether this was really all my fault, I’d killed her. My spell. Kennedy was right, Giles was right, I was an amateur and that girl was dead. The monster rose up and started to get in my face, but Giles knocked me out of the way. The monster got him instead, and Giles fell down, unconscious or dead or hopefully unconscious. I flattened myself against the wall, as far away from the dragon as I could get without actually running away, and just stood there, panting, watching as the slayers tried to kill this monster that was going to kill them.
I wanted to kill it, crush it. I wanted to be as strong as Buffy was, as strong as Faith was, as strong as all the Slayers had been once upon a time, strong like an amazon the way Tara would’ve wanted me to be, but I wasn’t. I was just Willow, the stupid witch who’d gotten us all into trouble in the first place. I looked around frantically and saw a cement bust and I picked it up and threw it at one of the heads with all my might.
The cement head and the dragon head collided, but the monster hardly noticed, and it fell to the floor and shattered, harmless and a million pieces. It’s long neck rose up and all of a sudden I was eye to eye with the thing, and I started throwing things, anything I could find, but it wasn’t helping. Nothing was helping. A growl sounded and there was a wolf, there was Oz being a wolf, tearing into the thing, biting and ripping and shredding and then it was over, at least for a second because…
I wanted to throw up, purge myself of it, but at the same time I wished it had eaten me because I was going to have to tell them the truth, that it was me that made this happen. I sank to the ground and started to sob, started crying so hard that I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to stop, and even if I could, I wouldn’t have wanted to, because I needed that release so bad. I didn’t even notice when there wasn’t any monster anymore, when there was just dust and people crying and people dead from the massacre.
When I finally looked up, Oz was standing there, covered in dragon blood and looking stoic and brave but somehow broken and I wanted to say something, wanted to thank him for saving my life, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything, or do anything except cry some more because I was too weak. I wasn’t strong like Buffy, or Faith, or the Slayers, or an amazon, and I hadn’t been in a very long time.
I wasn’t strong enough to do what I had to do next, to help Buffy and Giles take a count of the bodies and call their parents and tell them that we hadn’t protected them. I wasn’t strong enough to tell them that it was all my fault. But I had to, so I turned away slowly and headed down the stairs.