Chapter 19

“Are you lost?”

Angel turned swiftly, feeling ghostly fingers on his back. He saw nothing, but the flutter of leathery wings made him turn again. Once more, a hand grabbed at his neck and he spun, still encountering nothing. All around him whispers stirred, and dripping water echoed.

“Keep it up, you’re going to make me dizzy,” Angel ground out in annoyance, looking around the putrid lair deep in the sewers of Los Angeles. He looked up when the voice spoke for a second time. Dinza, the creature from Wesley’s book, squatted on a beam high above him.

“I doubt it.” She tilted her bald, mottled head, looking at him through a veil of cobwebs. “I think it would have happened before now. After being sent to Hell and then spat back out you should be accustomed to the feeling. Tell me, do you miss the Hellmouth?”

Thrown off, Angel took a cautious step forward. “You know who I am?”

“I know you were lost,” she whispered enigmatically. “I know all the lost things.”

“Really?” Angel inquired, seemingly impressed. At her nod, he revved up his witty banter and continued. “City of Atlantis? Holy Grail? Jimmy Hoffa?”

Dinza stared at him a moment, and then suddenly lunged. “Lost love.” She took flight and landed on another beam behind him and crouched there, grinning.

“So you know why I’m here? Who I’m trying to find?”

“She is far from you, champion, and needs you no longer,” she shook her head in mock sympathy.

“I need her,” Angel countered determinedly. “This world needs her.”

Without warning the whispers grew louder, and Dinza turned her head sharply. She listened for a moment, and then looked back at the vampire, her eyes glowing in the dim light.

“They think that you should join them. That I should never let you out.”

Angel readied himself for a fight, when the goddess chuckled.

“But who listens to the dead?” She leaned towards him and pointed a gnarled finger. “The Axis of Pythia rests close by. What you seek can only be found inside the Axis.” She stood slowly, and Angel tried to make sense of her speech.

“The Axis?” he repeated.

“An ancient power bridging all dimensions. Find the Axis, and find your lost one.”

“Why should I trust you?” Angel backed away a step, and all at once she was behind him. Her hands clutched his shoulders, and she caressed his cheek with a fingernail. He froze.

“Because I would love to keep you. But you have so much more to lose.”

Willow sat in her corner at the SummersÂ’ household, feeling utterly dejected. Well, she wasnÂ’t really in a corner, but it sure felt like sheÂ’d been sent to sit in one, complete with a conical DUNCE cap on her head.

Ever since the recent debacle with her Tabula Rasa spell, everyone was snapping at her and berating her. Except for Xander. Good old Xand. He didnÂ’t look happy, it was true, but whenever someone started in on her about her use of magic, heÂ’d jump in and defend her. Sort of. Actually, not so much. Willow cringed, remembering the things that were said after the spell had broken. She could still see GilesÂ’ lividly disappointed face staring her down.

“I never thought you’d go this far, Willow. Honestly, what could you have been thinking?”

“You absolutely horrible person! I can’t believe you’d put us all in that kind of danger. What is wrong with you?” Anya strode over to Willow, with her hands outstretched, ready to strangle the witch.

“Look everyone, I think we’re getting out of hand here-” Xander leapt in between Willow and Anya before the fur started to fly. It was just moments after they had all gotten their memories back, and the gang, including Spike, had returned to The Magic Box to sort things out.

“Out of hand?” Anya had exclaimed angrily. “Excuse me, but you weren’t the one fighting for your life in a shop full of bunnies! Do you know what that’s like?”

“Well, sort of, because we were the ones fighting for our lives against a vampire, and we didn’t even know they existed at the time, so technically-”

“Whatever! You can’t just play with people’s lives like that. For Pete’s sake, Giles and I thought we were a couple, and we- we uh…” Anya hesitated, her countenance becoming suddenly guilty-like. Giles coughed, and she waved her hand in dismissal. “Well that’s just for starters. Nobody knew who they were. Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to make everybody forget!” Willow shouted defensively. “Forget what we did, and just move on and let Buffy rest, wherever she is.”

“We don’t know where she is, you bloody bint, that’s why we’re trying to find her. And thank you so much for slowing us down.” Spike had discarded his jacket and tie, and was relaxing with a post-amnesia cigarette.

“She could be in a lot of trouble right now, and we would have forgotten all about her.” Dawn stared at Willow accusingly from the counter with her arms folded across her chest. “If she’s suffering because of you, I’ll- I’ll have somebody bigger than me kill you.”

Willow looked over at Tara in mute appeal. Her lovely girlfriend had not said one word to her since the crystal broke. Now she just sat at the table, and looked to the door, lost in her own thoughts.

Finding no help in that quarter, Willow looked to Xander, but his eyes were cast down to the floor, and he was shaking his head. “Xander,” she whispered beseechingly. “Help me out, here.”

Before he could speak, Anya jumped in. “Don’t you dare defend her, Xander. You are way too soft on her, and that’s a big part of the problem.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Do I have to remind you about the bunnies?”

Xander considered his words for a moment. “Will, I know you won’t want to hear this from me but,” He turned and faced her, his brown eyes full of concern. “I think you need to take a little break.”

“Yes, Xander, I think that would be wise,” Giles stated in a clipped tone. He turned to Willow with purpose. “In fact, I am now your official watchdog, Willow. You will not lift one finger without my supervision, do you understand? This is the end of the line for you with magic. You are to do nothing, nothing at all without my permission and observation.”

“Jeez, can I go to the bathroom by myself?” Willow asked sarcastically.

“Do not treat this lightly, girl!” Giles’ shout made everyone jump. He lowered his voice, but every word bit into Willow as if he were screaming at her. “I should have seen this coming. I should have done something about it long ago. You have never been able to deal with pain very well, and you have never had the respect for the consequences of powerful magic.”

“That’s not true-”

Nearly everyone scoffed at that, and Willow remembered how awful she felt then. They all began to remind her of her magical disasters and her carelessness. They seemed to forget all of her triumphs and successes. SheÂ’d done a lot to help, but they could only see the negative.

Now she was completely forbidden to do any kind of magic. Not even to help Buffy. Tara and Giles had set up a barrier to prevent her from entering The Magic Box. If she tried to get in, a high-pitched alarm that only she could hear would ring in her ears for a month, and probably damage her hearing, not to mention drive her crazy. If she tried to tamper with the alarm, (Anya had suggested this one) there was a spell put on that too. Her skin would turn completely green. Permanently.

“It’s a lovely chartreuse, actually,” Anya pointed out smugly, when they told Willow about these restrictions. “It’ll totally clash with your hair, though.”

Remembering how Xander just stood silently by as all these things happened to her, the witchÂ’s heart ached. He didnÂ’t try to reason with the others, or even to comfort her. She shook her head and ground her teeth, knowing that Anya had her best friend completely under her little ex-demonic thumb.

What hurt the most, however, was Tara. WillowÂ’s eyes filled as she thought of what her girlfriend said to her when sheÂ’d tried to apologize.

“Don’t! Just… don’t. There’s nothing you can say.”

“Tara, I didn’t mean to-”

“To what? Violate our minds like that? My mind? How could you, Willow? How could you after what Glory did to me?”

Willow frowned at Tara’s harsh interpretation of her actions. “Violate you? I didn’t mean anything like that, I just wanted all of us to stop hurting.”

“If you don’t wanna feel bad, you don’t do hurtful things. You don’t use magic to make it all disappear.” A thought occurred to Tara, and she turned suspicious eyes to her girlfriend. “Have you used that spell on me before? Just me, when we’ve had a fight or something?”

Willow was too surprised to voice a denial, and Tara saw all she needed to know in that moment. She stood up angrily, and Willow stood as well, and reached out to her. Tara put up her hands and backed up, not wanting to be touched.

Willow dropped her hand dejectedly. “But I just wanted to make things better. Better for all of us.”

“But you don’t get to decide what is better for us, Will. We’re all of us in this thing, we are supposed to decide for ourselves,” Tara told her sharply. “And you and me, we’re in a relationship. When we fight we’re supposed to resolve it together! What is wrong with you?”

“Okay, I’m- I realize I-I did it wrong,” Willow conceded, but inside she felt confused and not a bit indignant. Why shouldn’t she try to fix what she’d done wrong in the first place? Okay, so it went all kablooey, but her heart was in the right place, wasn’t it?

Tara shook her head gravely. “You did it the way you’re doing everything. When things get rough you… you don’t even consider the options. You just… you just do a spell. It’s not good for you, Willow. And it’s not what magic is for.”

Willow couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wasn’t evil, but everyone, including her girlfriend, was acting like she was. “But I just wanna help people.”

“Maybe that’s how it started, but…you’re helping yourself now, fixing things to your liking. Including me.” A horrible silence fell, and Tara looked away, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t think this is gonna work.”

This was enough to make Willow promise anything at all. Panic welled in Willow’s throat, and she rushed forward and tried to take Tara’s hands. “No! I need you, Tara, please don’t leave me, please! I’ll change. I’ll do what Giles tells me, I won’t do any magic, just please don’t leave me!”

Tara heard the rising hysteria in WillowÂ’s voice and relented just a little. “IÂ’ll have to think about it. WeÂ’ll give it some time, and then weÂ’ll see. But I need some space right now. LetÂ’s just take a break, okay?” ‘I canÂ’t believe IÂ’m saying this!’

Willow couldn’t believe it, either. It was impossible to stop the tears from falling as she relived this scene in her head. Her life was falling apart. She was a prisoner, forbidden to do magic. When and if they found Buffy and brought her back, Willow was being transported to England, where, Giles informed her autocratically, she would be ‘learning about the proper use of magic’ from a coven in Devon. This meant she had to take a leave of absence from school.

It really rankled Willow that she was being ordered around like this. All her magic paraphernalia had been confiscated as well. Even her books. It was done so fast, she didnÂ’t have a chance to secret away an emergency stash.

And now she was sitting here during a Scooby meeting, totally unable to really participate. TheyÂ’d gotten a phone call from Angel. HeÂ’d seen the icky goddess, who had told them about this Axis of Pythia thing.

“The Axis of Cynthia?”

“Pythia,” Giles corrected Dawn.

“Thounds like you got a thpeech impediment there Gileth.” Xander joked. No one laughed, and he looked around expectantly. “You know, Pythia instead of… Pyssia? Oh never mind.”

Giles continued, ignoring the interruption. “Wesley faxed over some pages on this object. It’s an ancient power that bridges dimensions. A two-foot high metal arch that stands on a marble base.” Giles held up a drawing that depicted the mystical instrument. “Forged from the tripod of the Delphic Oracle, the three-legged golden stool in the temple of Apollo at Delphi where the priestess sat while giving responses to those consulting the Oracle.”

“The Oracle at Delphi?” Anya scoffed. “She didn’t know anything. That temple was built into a cave where these noxious gases coming from underground made her all high, and she’d just babble some gibberish at you in response to your questions. It’s one of the few times something supernatural really does get explained away by simple science.” She looked at Giles who was frowning at her in confusion. “Oh, it was all before my time of course, but you hear things when you’ve been around as long as I have.”

“You mean you could ask her a question about the future, and she could say ‘Blabadoo bleebadoo, chirp, chirp, chirp!’?” Xander waved his hands erratically and flapped his arms like a chicken. This time he got a few giggles, and he reveled in it a moment before continuing. “What can you get from that?”

“Well, there were these priests who interpreted for her. She’d prattle, and they’d just tell the questioner something they made up off the top of their heads. It was a clever racket,” Anya explained with a bit of admiration in her voice.

“Then what good is this piece of junk if it was all a con?” Spike asked impatiently. “And speaking of ‘prattle’, can we please stay on subject?”

“Yes, let’s,” Giles agreed, and cleared his throat. “Well, the Oracle may or may not have been an actual psychic or clairvoyant, but there must have been something mystical about either her or the place she was in, because the Axis has many powers. Among them is the ability to find souls or entities across dimensions.”

“Where is this thing, let’s go get it!” Dawn cried excitedly.

“It’s in an auction house in Los Angeles,” Giles perused another document to find this information. “Chandler’s Auction House, an establishment firmly rooted in the black market.”

“Convenient,” Spike muttered.

“Not really,” the Watcher countered. “It’s not up for auction at this time, so it’s probably in their vault.”

“Couldn’t we, I don’t know, offer to buy it, take it off their hands?” Xander suggested.

“Certainly,” Giles nodded. “If anyone here has thirty-three million dollars, please step up and we’ll do just that.”

Xander broke out into a huge coughing fit, and Anya pounded him on the back. When he recovered, he said “So I’m guessing we’re stealing it.”

“We are not, Angel and his team are,” Giles told him. “They’ll be going in tomorrow night.”

“They’ll need help,” Willow said. Everyone turned to look at her. She had not spoken a word since the meeting began, of course, but she had had enough of being a spectator. “A place like that is going to have all sorts of high-tech razzmatazz. I-I could cloak them with magic-”

“No!” Everyone shouted at once. Giles glared at her, and Tara did so as well.

“You know, sooner or later you guys are going to need me. No offense, hon- Tara, but you know you’re not as strong as I am, and when we find out where Buffy is, we’ll probably need some major mojo in order to get her back.” She paused for breath, and looked pleadingly at her friends. “I really want to help.”

Tara stepped forward, her arms crossed. “If you want to help, you can hack into the auction house’s computers, and shut down the security systems.” She shook her head. “No magic. Please Will? Just stick this out for a while, okay?”

“If and when we find Buffy’s location, Willow, we may need your magic skills,” Giles conceded quietly. “Until then… I just can’t trust you not to go out and do something rash. You’ve proven to us that you’re quite skilled, but you’ve broken faith with us all. Playing with our minds was wrong, and you know it.”

Xander worked up some enthusiasm in the ever gloomy atmosphere. “Do the hacker thing again, Willow, you’re a genius at it. You haven’t done it in a long time. I think it’d be good for you.”

Willow took in her friends’ wary and hopeful faces and finally relented. “All right. Call Angel, tell him I’m in.”

Xander gave her a half-smile, Giles nodded in approval, and TaraÂ’s eyes softened a little. Willow smiled hesitantly, and there was a moment of the old camaraderie among them until Anya spoke up.

“Just think,” she chirped. “If we’d thought of getting the Axis before, we would have had a way of knowing that Buffy was in heaven, and then none of this would have happened.” She looked at the frowning faces around her. “What? I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking!”

Author’s note: Dinza, and the Axis of Pythia, as well as the dialogue from the first scene in this chapter are taken from the Angel episode entitled “Ground State”, which does not occur until Season 4 of Angel. For purposes of this story the dialogue has been altered somewhat. Season 4 coincides with Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am purposefully putting these events in a season earlier, since they serve the plot of my story. I’m not going to go into how this may affect the events that occur in Angel since it’s just too complicated.

The dialogue between Tara and Willow is taken from the beginning of “Tabula Rasa”.