Seeking Vengeance

 Chapter 19 - Gone

I think there was a sort of lull then. I mean, after Dawn was taken, and Anya left, things sort of stayed still for a while. That wasn't that clear from where I was, because I was forced to watch re-runs of what had already happened, and to see some specially chosen scenes from the future. But, more of that later.

Buffy coped with the time leading up to the hearing on her guardianship by thinking as little as possible. She was a shadow of the girl I knew, but she managed to get through all the hoops she and society put on her. She worked, she slayed, she met with Social Services, and allowed them to poke around in her life.

She wasn't sleeping well, and she wouldn't tell anyone about the dreams that woke her several times a night. I knew what she was dreaming about. It was a source of horror for Buffy, so I got to share them. She was dreaming about digging herself out of her grave. She was dreaming about being pulled out of heaven, and being thrown into hell. That's how it felt to her. The Sunnydale she came back to was full of demons and burning fires and looted shops, so you can hardly blame her for not recognising it as coming home.

Someone at work made a comment about her hair - something about the fact that it'd be more practical to cut it, so she did. It was after she came out of the salon that the three eejits struck again.

Oh, they'd been busy enough in the meantime, it just wasn't obvious to Buffy and the others. They did freeze a museum guard, and the gang was researching an ice demon for a while, but otherwise, their antics didn't really impinge on her life.

Somehow, and I never understood how such fundamentally stupid people seem to be able to do such extraordinary things, but between them, they built an invisibility ray. When I say between them, it was mainly Warren, but the others were the cheerleading squad. They caught Buffy with it, accidentally, leaving her initially dazed, and then almost euphoric.

She saw it as a chance to escape her life. She spent some time doing some minor pranks around town. Gradually, though, she started to realise that it wasn't really a good idea, and that it wasn't going to make getting Dawn back any easier if she was invisible, so she started thinking about what to do.

Buffy's first thought was that Willow was responsible, so she called Tara. She didn't tell the witch what the problem was, but arranged to meet her later that day, after classes were over, hoping that Tara would be able to reverse the effect. Then, she called Xander, telling him what had happened. Xander had exactly the same thought Buffy had had, except his answer was to find Willow and try to find out what had happened. Once Willow had persuaded him that she wasn't responsible, the two of them started researching.

Then, Buffy had the idea of going off to the Social Services office, and having a look at the files they were keeping on her. Once there, she improvised a bit, and managed to make Doris Keller look like she was having a nervous breakdown. She also took the opportunity to 'lose' most of the most detrimental files on her. Of course, some of it, like the accident and emergency report were too easy to replace, but a lot of Keller's personal observations and opinions were lost, and that was a good thing, particularly since Keller wasn't going to be around for a while to re-write them.

When they investigated the 'scene of the crime', Willow and Xander found some other things that had been affected by the ray, among them a traffic cone, and they took them back to the house to examine them.

Willow even found a link between the scene and the black van that Buffy had associated with her previous problems. So, she went to follow up this information, determined to find the owner of the black van, while Xander headed back to the books.

It didn't take too long before Xander had discovered that the invisibility ray had serious side-effects. Over time, being invisible caused the molecular structure of the person or thing to gradually dissolve. He immediately went off to try to find Buffy, but he had no idea where to look, and he could hardly ask if anyone had seen her.

Willow managed to come up with a list of local addresses which had black vans answering Buffy's description, and after several tries, she came up trumps. She went inside the building, and headed down to the basement, finding it full of electronic equipment and a schematic of the invisibility gun, as well as three invisible nerds who proceeded to capture her.

Buffy got home to find a message from Xander waiting on the answer-phone, but before she could respond, she had a call from the nerds to say they had Willow. Two of them thought that the plan was to get Buffy to come to them so they could reverse the invisibility, while Warren just planned to get rid of the Slayer once and for all. He just hadn't told the others.

Because Buffy had already arranged to meet up with Tara, she called her, changing the meeting place to close to the amusement where she was meeting the nerds. In terms of timing, she planned to be able to rescue Willow before Tara arrived.

Naturally, for three supposed master criminals who had an invisibility ray in their possession, they were nowhere in sight when Buffy arrived.

Willow was visible, and Buffy approached.  Willow was able to tell Buffy that the nerds were around, and that there were only three of them.

They told Buffy that they planned to make her visible again, thereby saving her life, and after a few moments, Buffy believed them.

It was about then that Tara arrived, and realising she was early for her meeting with Buffy, she went into the arcade. Tara was watching someone playing one of the games, so she didn't see Willow, but Willow spotted Tara.

As Buffy lifted something into the air to show the nerds where she was so they could aim the ray at her, Willow was calling out to her lover. She turned back just as Warren's finger started to tighten on the trigger, and noticed that the gun was set, not to reverse the invisibility, but to accelerate the rate of damage. She dived, pushing Buffy to the floor, and the full blast of the ray instead hit Tara who immediately disappeared.

There was a shocked silence for a few seconds, then Buffy made a dive for Warren who was still holding the gun, while Willow ran towards where Tara had last been seen.

Buffy managed to get the gun, and threw it to Willow who immediately set it for reversal and turned it on Tara, but it was too late. Tara was already dead as vital organs had disintegrated enough to make life impossible.

Turning from Tara's body, Willow turned the ray on Buffy and the nerds, making them visible again. Then, she started to change, turning dark, her hair, her eyes becoming black. She held out a hand to a startled Warren and he was blasted against one of the game machines with a sickening crunch of bones. She did the same with each of the other two, as Buffy stood, not understanding what had happened, not realising that Tara was dead.

"Willow, what? Is Tara ok? You don't need to,.. I had it under control."

Willow's answer was to blast further power into the already injured nerds. Buffy tried to stop her, of course she did, but Willow set up some sort of barrier between her and her targets, and the rest of the world.

Realising she couldn't stop Willow, Buffy ran to Tara, finding her dead, but appearing as she did in life. There was no sign of any injury.

When it was all over, Willow slumped to the floor, and the barrier she had erected collapsed as she did. Buffy ran towards her friend, to find her unconscious, and nothing left of the three nerds, other than some serious scorch marks left on the walls and carpet.

That's how the police found them. Buffy was holding an unconscious Willow in her arms close to Tara's body. She managed to make up some sort of story, of how Tara had collapsed and died, and Willow had fainted from the shock of it. The scorch marks were studiously ignored by the investigators. And, of course, everyone else in the arcade had disappeared at the first sound of trouble.

The police offered to call someone, and Buffy gave them Xander's number. He arrived, and took the girls home.

Willow was spent, exhausted with grief and the energy she had expended. Even when she came around, she was almost catatonic. Xander and Buffy managed to carry her upstairs to bed. Once that was done, they went downstairs, and both gave into the grief they felt. Although Willow's loss was the greatest, they both loved Tara in their own way. Hell, I cared about her too.

Giles had a surprising visitor just after that. Anya, in her newly reinstated role of vengeance demon had felt the need for vengeance, and knew what had happened. She was able to sense that what had already happened wouldn't be enough for Willow, and she foresaw some devastating consequences. She arrived in Giles' apartment, and after a short explanation of her own recent history, she told him what had happened.

Realising the urgency of the matter, Giles contacted a coven in Devon that he'd been working with, and they arranged to allow him to teleport to Sunnydale to deal with Willow.

He didn't bother to explain his sudden appearance to a mystified Buffy and Xander, simply asking where Willow was. They indicated upstairs, and he ran up them faster than I've ever seen the Watcher move. The other two followed, only to find him standing in Willow's doorway staring at an empty room.