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Chapter 8 - Reconciliation
Saturday, May 4th, 2002
"Clem? Is that you?" Dawn asked as she answered the phone.
"Hey," came the cheery confirmation. "Dave said you were looking for me."
"Yeah, two hours ago." Dawn rolled her eyes. "I guess he wasn't real quick passing
on the message."
"Guess not. You looking for your sister? 'Cause I kinda
get the impression her and Spike aren't together any more... at least Spike's
back with the moody and when-"
The teen cut Clem off before he could stray further into the realm of things she probably wasn't meant to know. "Buffy's here, but, well, it's complicated... We need
to get hold of Spike. Anya's gone missing. The shop was all shut up and
none of us know where she's living now she's moved out of Xander's so
we don't know if she's just ill or whether she's really missing. Xander's
not answering his phone and there's only me, Willow and Tara and we can't
leave Buffy alone."
"Well I suppose I could call Anya, see if she answers,
but I don't know if I should give you her address," Clem offered by way of compromise. "I mean she might be
okay about it, but most demons would get a bit upset if you told the slayer
where they lived... And given what she is, not a good idea to be on bad
terms."
"Anya's back with the vengeance gig?" The teen's voice was
halfway to a squeak.
Willow's mouth fell open as she listened to Dawn's
side of the conversation.
"Oh-Oh! Guess she didn't tell you guys then?" Clem replied, sounding flustered. "Hallie said
D'Hoffryn offered her her old job back after the wedding. You still want
me to call her?"
"Please... If you can," Dawn asked after only a slight hesitation. "D'you think you could swing by Spike's
crypt as well, get him to come over to our place or give us a call as
soon as possible, unless you don't get an answer at Anya's... Then it might
be better if he checked there to see if there was any trouble, unless
he knows where she is 'cause none of us can do that..." As if she realised that the list of instructions was getting too complicated, she cut it back to the basics. "Just tell him to
call me ASAP. Tell him it's urgent. Tell him I need him."
"This is bad. This is very, very bad." Willow paced the
room as she spoke.
"Well, I guess it means Xander's responsible for messing
up her life even more than we thought, but I mean she's still Anya. We
just have to be really careful what we say," Dawn replied.
"No, Dawn, think about it," the witch insisted, stopping her pacing to pin the girl with her eyes. "Have you spoken to Anya since
she came back? It all makes sense now. She was trying to get one of us
to wish something awful on Xander... And then she hooks up with Spike, who
hates Xander, and
then Buffy's like this and Xander's not answering his phone. She got Spike
to make a wish and now she's skipped town 'cause she knows we'll come after
her."
"He wouldn't. Spike would never hurt Buffy..." Dawn tailed
off.
"He already did. You saw her face last night. She maybe
wasn't as bad as Xander, but she was hurt and, even if Anya and Spike didn't
have some sort of conspiracy, Spike still might have said something without
realising. Oh God, I can't believe we didn't realise what she was trying
to do."
"Hindsight's always twenty-twenty, sweetie," Tara pointed out, trying
to soothe her former lover. "But we still don't know what's happened.
I mean it's possible, but it is just one possibility, and in a way if
that is what happened, then it might be a good thing because then Anya
would be able to reverse it, wouldn't she? She might be angry at Xander
for a while, but she still loves him. She's just really hurting. When
she calms down she'd reverse whatever's happened. I'm sure she would."
Tara's arms wrapped themselves around the distraught redhead, pulling
her close.
"Ehm, I'm just going to take the phone upstairs and sit
with Buffy," Dawn announced hesitantly before she practically tiptoed from the room, leaving the former
lovers alone.
"What if Xander's dead?" Willow asked with a slight waver to her voice. "Most of the guys Anya did stuff
to, they died."
"Anya wasn't in love with any of them," Tara answered calmly and firmly. "Remember how you
nearly cursed Oz when he left you, but you couldn't do it because you
loved him? That's what it would be like for Anya to do a vengeance spell
on Xander."
Tara stroked amber strands away from Willow's tear-streaked
cheeks and Willow trembled beneath her touch.
"I know," the redhead conceded, "but I also remember trying to kill Xander because
I didn't want him to be with anyone else."
"That wasn't you," Tara told her. "That was the spell. It's nearly impossible
to use magic to create true love. The feelings you had because of the
spell were more like an obsession than love. That's why it made you selfish.
Without the influence of the spell you would never hurt Xander."
"But I hurt you," the other witch replied regretfully.
"You underestimated the pull of the magic. You let it
envelop you so deep you lost sight of who you were and who I was but I
don't believe you ever did anything with the intent of harming me," Tara reassured, giving Willow a gentle hug. "It
just got to the point where you used magic for everything as an automatic
response and you didn't think about what it was you were really doing."
"Did I say how sorry I was?" Willow asked.
"You said it lots of times," Tara confirmed, "but until now you never sounded
like you meant it. You were getting too much of a kick out of having that
much power to regret anything enough to give it up." She took a deep
breath. "Will, things went so wrong before, and there's so much
work we both have to do to rebuild any sort of relationship... What happened,
it's changed both of us and that's going to change how we react to each
other. It's going to take time before we trust each other the way we did
before, but, baby, when I see you like this, I just want to be able to
hold you and kiss away all the pain... Can I? Could we be getting through
this together?"
Willow tilted her head back to claim the lips of the
woman she loved in a gentle kiss. For the longest time the two sat on
the sofa, Willow cradled in her lover's arms, exchanging the sweet kisses
and gentle caresses that were the promise of a more passionate night to
come. For a time they were able to forget the problems that surrounded
them.
Spike pulled the motorcycle over at the side of the road as
quickly as he could. He looked down at the surf pounding against the cliff
base forty feet below as he finally located what he was looking for in
his coat pocket. He checked the caller ID before accepting the incoming
call.
"Hey, Clem. How's it hangin'?"
"Ehm... That's rhetorical, right?" Clem replied, sounding rather dubious.
"If you say so. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"When are you going to tell the slayer and her people
that you've got a cell phone?"
Spike gave a snort of derision. "When hell freezes over.
She's already got me by the balls. No need to give her the chance to have
them stuffed and mounted over the fireplace."
'Or I might have found out two minutes ago when you
heard it ringing,' thought Buffy as she eavesdropped on the conversation.
"Well, you might change your mind," Clem informed him. "Dawn called the bar,
looking for you. It took Dave two hours to pass on the message. There's
some sort of trouble. I don't think she wanted to say over the phone, but
the slayer's out of commission."
'And I'm shocked and surprised by this since there's
no-one driving,' the slayer said to herself, as there was no-one
else to hear her.
"...Anya and her ex have gone missing. She said to get
you to call as soon as possible. She said she needs you."
"Clem, get off the line. I've got a call to make," Spike snapped.
"Tell her Anya's not answering her phone, then."
"She's not answering her soddin' doorbell either. Just
get off the phone." | 
